Mushroom Town Part 10

"When did you arrive? Only last night? And you're stopping at the 'Majestic'? Well, you've somebody there who can tell you more about it than I can--Big Annie the head-chambermaid on the first floor. There are a good many things about Llanyglo now that I've had to keep out of my Guide, you see. But I'll tell you what I can.

"And I don't want to give you any false impression. Don't forget that scores and hundreds of families come here and bathe, and picnic, and dance, and go for drives, and enjoy themselves, and go away again without a notion that everybody here isn't exactly like themselves. And there's no harm in the Wakes people either. The worst you can say of them is that now and then one of them gets violently or torpidly drunk, as the case may be, and that all of them make a most hideous and infernal noise. So don't think I'm talking disproportionately, and that this is the only place of its kind I was ever in.

"But I do mean this: that somehow or other we've now acquired a very peculiar kind of notoriety. You can deny it, disprove it, show that it isn't there at all, and--there it remains all the time. For one thing, you'll see if you look round that the place is very much less northern in character than it was, and as it happens that's very significant. For it might conceivably happen that a northerner--or a southerner, or anybody else--might have his reasons for avoiding a place that was full of other northerners, many of whom might know him (they have an expression in the North for the kind of thing I mean; they call it 'making mucky doorstones'). So you'll find lots and lots of Londoners here now, and midlanders, and easterners and westerners. They come here, where n.o.body's ever seen them before and will never see them again perhaps, for much the same reason that some Englishmen are said to go to Paris.

"I don't want to make them out more in number than they are. Spread out over the whole country they'd only be a fractional percentage, and you'd never notice them; but when they're brought together here they're quite enough to give the place a character. They aren't the open and reckless kind. Furtiveness--complete disappearance if possible--is the whole point. They're the men who arrange for somebody to post their letters home from the place they're supposed to be really at, and the women who, as the Bible says, eat and wipe their lips and say they haven't eaten. They want to dodge, not only everybody else, but themselves also, something they're perhaps afraid of in themselves, for a fortnight, three weeks, a month. You see, they've persuaded themselves (and Llanyglo's done too well out of them to undeceive them) that things done here somehow 'don't count.' If you want to do something you'd never dare to do in a place where you were known, you come to Llanyglo to do it. If you can imagine the oasis in the desert with exactly the contrary meaning--that's us. We're an asylum for those who've lost their moral memories.

"And it isn't that wedding-rings are juggled off and on, and false names entered in hotel registers, nor anything of that kind. That goes on more or less everywhere, and we haven't become notorious merely for that. And as usual, it's easier to say what it isn't than what it is. It isn't the Trwyn, for example, though that does twitter so with kisses from morning till night that you'd think it was the gra.s.shoppers. And it isn't the almost open displays you see at certain hours wherever you go. It isn't any one fact, not even the worst. It's a faint attar of some abandonment, some bottomlessness, that you can't name. It may be my imagination, but I've fancied I've actually smelt it with my nostrils, coming into it from a mile out of the town. They relinquish even appearances. Most of us have the grace to cover up our sins with a decent and saving hypocrisy, but these know and understand one another so horribly well. They seem to find a comfort that they're all in the same boat. As they say themselves, 'Heaven for climate but h.e.l.l for company.' Give them your name on your visiting-card and they'll ask you by and by what your real name is. Until then, neither your name nor anything else about you is their business. They haven't any business. For a week, or a fortnight, or a month, they've turned their backs on that tremendous common business that keeps the world going. It's the blind eye, and Llanyglo provides the blinkers....

"But go and talk to Big Annie. She's really a rather remarkable woman. At stated hours she sits on point duty on the landing of her floor of eighty bedrooms, just where everybody's got to pa.s.s her, and if you look like making--er--a mistake (and your hotel's quite an easy place to get lost in) she sets you right without a quiver of her face. Yes, she's rather an alarming person. There's a swiftness about her way of summing up people from a single glance at their faces. Oh, you don't take Annie in with a wedding-ring and a 'darling' or so--especially when the lady asks the darling whether he takes sugar in his early morning cup of tea....

"Yes, you go and see Annie."

Drub-drub--drub-drub-drub---- After a time that stupor of the ear became a stupor of the eye also. Even when a match glowed before a face for a moment, the stage-like lighting gave you no physiognomical information. The lamps shone on the crowns of the pa.s.sing hats, but the faces beneath them were lost; all cats were grey. Any one of them might have been a giggling flapper with her eyes still sealed to Life, or one of those others mentioned by the too-curious author of the Guide, who would be dead to sight and thought for a s.p.a.ce that didn't count. Light frocks and darker hues, bare heads and plaits and shawls and hooded dominoes, shop-girl and high-school girl, caps and straws and panamas, pipes and cigarettes, youths thoughtless and youths predatory--you paid your threepence at the turnstiles and watched them pa.s.s and repa.s.s. Drub-drub-drub.... And if you sat long enough, changes began to be perceptible. The flappers who were evidently high-school girls began to be fewer, and others took their places--for most of the shops of Llanyglo closed at nine or half-past, and the released waitresses and a.s.sistants who had been on their feet all day were still not too weary to add to the drub-drubbing. It was difficult to say in what particular these were distinguishable. It was not their dress--the universal attainment of a certain standard of dressing is one of our modern miracles. You would not have had it from their own lips--you would have been tactless in the extreme not to have a.s.sumed that they also were visitors (as a matter of fact, they would calmly make appointments for four o'clock of the next day, knowing perfectly well that at that hour they would be giving change in a cash-desk or hurrying hither and thither with piles of bread and b.u.t.ter and trays awash with spilt tea). Perhaps it was the young men they greeted and their way of greeting them. They didn't come out for these last hours of the day to gossip with those to whom they had called "Sign!" all the afternoon, their own foremen, companions, or the tradesmen of the shop opposite.

Drub-drub--drub-drub---- There pa.s.sed through the Season Ticket turnstile two young men. Both wore dark suits and conventional collars and ties (as if they, at any rate, had no need to don their coloured jackets and flannel trousers while they could), and the attendant at the turnstile had touched his cap as they had pa.s.sed. One of them, the taller of the two, wore his straw hat halo-wise at the back of his head, filled his pipe as he walked, and looked cheerfully and un.o.bservingly about him; the other's straw was well down, and the eyes beneath its brim sought somebody or something, and would apparently be satisfied with nothing less. The first was Percy Briggs, and everybody in Llanyglo knew Percy Briggs--Percy Briggs, who strolled casually into Hotel Cosies towards midday, nodded to the more favoured ones, said to the barmaid "So and So been in yet?" and, getting a bright "No, Mr. Briggs, not yet" for an answer, lounged out again without having had a drink--a sufficient gage of privilege and familiarity with the place. The other was John Willie Garden, who knew Llanyglo, knew which faces had been there last year and the year before, and was now looking for a face he had seen yesterday evening for one moment only and had then lost again.

The Pier was an old, old story to him now. Between seasons, on winter nights, the drub-drub of a few months before seemed sometimes still faintly to echo in his ears--this when the grey skies came, and in the hotels a few rooms only were kept open for unprofitable commercial travellers, and the Promenade was empty, and the Pleasure Packet Service laid up, and a walk to the end of the Pier and back seemed a long way to feet that had covered the distance twenty times on a summer's evening, and the colourless sea seemed to give to the red and white blink of the Trwyn Light a sudden and nearer significance. He knew every hour of Llanyglo's day--the hours of departure of the pleasure-boats to Rhyl and Llandudno and round Anglesey, the bathing-hours in the morning, the high-school parade at midday, the second bathing relay in the afternoon, the tea-hour, the walk of parents and children to see the boats come in again in the early evening, and then, as the evening wore on, the successive appearances and droppings out of this kind or that, the emptying of the Pavilions, the inflow of the shop-girls and waitresses, the rush for the public-houses half an hour before the Pier lights went out, the thinning numbers who beat the Promenade, the parties of the Alsatians who sat up in one another's hotels long after every public drinking-place had been closed. He had nothing further to learn about it all, and it bored him. Only his search for that girl had brought him on the Pier to-night.

He had been almost certain he knew her, but where he had seen her face before he could not for the life of him remember. Perhaps he did not know her after all; indeed, when he came to think of it, no memory of a voice seemed to go with the face, so that the probability was that if he had seen her before he had never spoken to her. She had been standing, in that blue twilight, clear of the throng, under the single crimson pier-head light, looking out over the water that seemed still to reflect a light that had faded from the sky, and for a moment John Willie had wondered what she was looking at. The next moment he had seen--and so, confound it, had twenty others. A yellow spot, like a riding-light, had risen out of the sea; almost as quickly as the second-hand of a watch moves, it had become a tip; and then the lookers-in at the gla.s.s sides of the Pavilion had run to see the rising of the bloated, refraction-magnified, burning yellow horn. In that little running of people he had lost her. Twice, thrice he had walked the whole length of the Pier, but without seeing her again. All of her that he could now remember was the carriage of her head and her plain black dress, and he knew that dress, in this extraordinary raising of the standard of dressing which implies the possession by almost everybody of two dresses at least, was an uncertain guide.

Another rattle of hand-clapping broke out as Percy Briggs and John Willie pa.s.sed the turnstiles. "Any good looking in there?" Percy asked, nodding towards the Concert Hall, but John Willie made no reply. He was as cross as a bear with a sore head. Twice already he had rounded on Percy, who had proposed drinks at this place or that, and had snapped "You go if you want--I'm not keeping you;" but Percy had replied good-naturedly, "Oh, all right, keep your hair on."

The sounds of two more pairs of heels were added to the drub-drubbing on the planks of the Pier.

It seemed idle to seek, but John Willie stood looking in at the gla.s.s sides of the Pavilion at the pier-head, searching the bright and crowded interior. His mind was as obstinately set as that of a mule. It seemed to him idiotic that all those rows and rows of people should clap the inanities of the young man in knee-breeched evening-dress who strutted and made painted eyes over the top of a flattened opera-hat, or encore Miss Sal Volatile, all spidery black silk stockings below and c.o.c.ksfeather boa and enormous black halfmoon hat above. John Willie turned away to the low-burning crimson pier-light. He stood there for some moments, and then began to stride back the length of the Pier again.

"Chucking it?" said Percy, half sympathetic, half "getting at" John Willie.

"Come on to the Kursaal," John Willie grunted.

The Kursaal lay behind the two frontages of Gardd and Pontnewydd Streets, and it could be reached from either thoroughfare. From Gardd Street, up another short street, the great lighted semicircle of what was then its Main Entrance could be seen; and if the minor entrance from Pontnewydd Street was at that time less resplendent, that was because the Kerrs' Hafod stood in the way of opening it up. With its grounds and theatre and vast dancing-hall, the Kursaal covered getting on for an eighth of a square mile; but a third or more of that was still in progress of being laid out and planted--once more by Philip Lacey.

Crossing the Promenade to the less crowded pavement beyond, John Willie and Percy strode the half-mile to the Kursaal. There was a queue about the turnstiles, but John Willie made a sign to an attendant, who flung up the Exit Only barrier. They pa.s.sed under trees with many-coloured electric lights among the branches, and the slowly turning Big Wheel, which made a quarter-arch of lights over the tower of the Central Hall, dipped behind it again as they reached the steps that led to the vestibule.

For size alone, apart from any other consideration, the dancing-hall of the Llanyglo Kursaal is one of the wonders of the North. It cost a hundred thousand pounds to build, and since it can dance a thousand couples, to seek anybody there without going up into the balconies is like looking for a needle in a bottle of hay. The band was not playing at the moment when Percy and John Willie entered; but before they had reached the top of an empty half-lighted series of staircases the distant strains of a Barn Dance had broken out. Then, with the pushing at a door, it burst loudly upon them. John Willie strode down the shallow gallery steps, made for a front seat whence he could see the whole length of the vast oblong below, spread out his elbows and set his chin on his wrists, and, once more muttering "You go and get your drink if you want," began to search the hall with gloomy blue eyes, very much as a boy flashes a bit of looking-gla.s.s. .h.i.ther and thither in the sun.

Now when the Wakes people come to Llanyglo, and the pleasant family parties yield place a little, and drive in the mountains more frequently, and leave the Pier and Promenade a little earlier, and gather more often at one another's hotels--even then that dancing-hall is so vast that twenty different elements can be accommodated there without mixing or encroachment. But that series of precipitations had not yet taken place. That night all was h.o.m.ogeneous. Perhaps here and there other contacts had spa.r.s.ely "crossed," as it were, that fresh blooming, as the white hawthorn takes on faintly the hue of the pink in the spring, but that was probably rare. John Willie, had he had eyes for it, looked down upon a wonderful sight. The hall was a creamy gold, with bow after bow along its balcony tiers; without its other innumerable cl.u.s.ters of lights, the eight arc-lamps in its high roof would have lighted it no better than a railway station is lighted; and the mirrors on the walls were hardly more polished than its satiny floor. A fully appointed stage half-way down one of the sides held an orchestra of thirty performers; walking across that wonderfully swung floor you felt something almost alive under your feet; and four thousand feet moved upon it that night.

It was beautiful. The band was playing, slowly, as is the dancing-fashion of the North, that Barn Dance; and almost every girl was in white. The whites were the whites of flowers--the greenish white of guelder-roses, the yellow white of elder or of meadow-sweet, the pinkish white of the faintest dog-rose, the dead white of narcissi, but little that was not white. And because of all that soft whiteness, faces caught by the sun were browner, and hair that the wind had blown through all day glossier, and eyes brighter, and perhaps blushes quicker and more readily seen. And to the whole bright spectacle was added the impressiveness of unfaltering rhythm and simultaneousness of movement. The Colour on the Horse Guards' Parade is not honoured with greater precision of physical movement than these disciplined feet, these turning bodies; the pulsing floor itself answered to the delicate dip of the conductor's stick. For two bars ... but look at them as they pour towards you down the left side of the room. Every face is towards you, forty abreast, and forty following those, and more forties, columns and squadrons of them, coming forward as grain comes down a channel, as graded fruit pours down a shoot. You do not see where they come from--their turn is far away under the pillars there; you do not see where they go to--they pa.s.s away out of sight again beneath you. They do not seem the same over and over again, but all the youths and maidens of the world, coming on and on, and new, always new.... Then you look to the right, and instantly your eyes are sensible of a darker ensemble. That is because you see, not faces now, but the backs of heads; not gaily striped shirts and bright ties, but plain shoulders only. And they pa.s.s away as they came, all the youths and maidens of the world with their backs to you. Not one turns for a look at you, not one nods you farewell. It is like your own youth leaving you.... And then magically all alters. Two more bars and, as if some strange and all-potent and instantaneously acting element had been dropped into the setting and returning human fluid, of a sudden it all breaks up. It effervesces. Every couple is seen to be waltzing. Two by two they turn, and your youth is no longer coming to you nor departing from you, but stops and plays. It stops and plays--for two bars--and lo, the other again. Once more they troop towards you with their faces seen, once more troop away with faces averted. The illusion becomes a spell. Coming, going, all different, all the same, parallel legions with faces to the future and faces to the grave--it is a little like Llanyglo itself. Suddenly you find yourself drawn a little closer to John Willie Garden. You do not want to look down from a balcony on all the young manhood and young womanhood of the world. One, one only, will suffice you, and with her you will come brightly down, all eyes and rosiness and laughter, and with her go in a soberer livery away again.... But luckier you than John Willie if you find that one. His eyes, practised as they were in scanning the Kursaal throng, did not see her. The coda came; the vast oblong well lighted up for a moment as a poplar lights up when the wind blows upon it--it was the slightly wider swing of skirts seen from above as the dance quickened to its finale; and then, as if something else potent and inimical had been dropped into the solution, there was a break for the sides, and the shining floor was seen again.

"d.a.m.n!" muttered John Willie Garden.

Percy, relishing the spectacle of John Willie on the hunt, was in no hurry. "The arbours?" he suggested laconically as John Willie rose; but again John Willie did not reply. For one thing, it was a little difficult to see into those dark nooks among Philip Lacey's barrows and planks and new larches and heaps of upturned earth; for another, he had an a.s.surance that she he sought would not be there.

"Come on," he grunted.

"Ah!" said Percy, with an exaggerated shake of himself. "Has the moment at last arrived when we quaff?"

But already John Willie had stridden on ahead.

They took a known short cut through dark and obstructed windings, and presently reached the side-door of the adjoining hotel. It had certain rooms where ladies unaccompanied might get a drink, but into these they barely glanced. Percy grinned. Should John Willie find the object of his search in one of the other rooms, then there was reasonable hope of a row. He had never before seen John Willie so persistently asking for trouble.

The door at which they paused showed a room crowded, bright, and full of a lawn of tobacco-smoke. It was not a large room, but it must have held twenty men and as many women, and you could have seen their like on any summer Sunday at Tagg's Island, or any day in Regent Street, or on Brighton Front. They sat in chairs of saddlebag or leather, and the fingers of the men were poised over the large cigar-boxes the waiters held before them, or else made little circular gestures about the circ.u.mference of the little round tables, as much as to say "Same again" or "Mine." Little but champagne, liqueurs, or brandies-and-soda seemed to be to their taste, and John Pritchard might indeed have thought them "very ritss whatever"; gold seemed to come from them at a touch, notes at little more. Just within the door a very brown man sat with a plump little lady about whose short fingers gems seemed to have candied, as sugar candies about a string; and next to them another man admired as much of his companion's shoes as could be seen for the champagne cooler on the floor. There was not much noise. There was a good deal of whispering about horses.

A ring was widened for the new-comers about one of the larger tables--"Arthur!" Percy called as he pa.s.sed one of the waiters. "Bag o' beer, and Mr. P. Briggs's compliments to Miss Price and will she please come at once." They settled down.

This was Percy's present humour--to drink pints of beer from a silver tankard that resembled a tun among the gem-like liqueur-gla.s.ses, and to make love to Miss Price, the fat and creasy and unapproachable hotel-manageress. Perhaps he intended to convey that few other new sensations remained to him at the end of his three-and-twenty hard-lived years. Sometimes John Willie laughed at this posture of his friend's, but to-night he thought it merely stupid and idiotic. He had come here because he had thought he might as well be having a drink as fruitlessly searching; now he thought he might as well be searching as having a drink he didn't want. Percy was ordering the drinks now--"Vermouth, Val? Cissie, your's is avocat, I know. Now, Johannes Guglielmus, what will you imbibe?" Presently John Willie sat glowering at a whiskey-and-soda. The girl on his left, whom Percy had addressed as Cissie, made an arch attempt to talk to him, and then gave up the laborious task and turned her back. Miss Price, the manageress, appeared, and Percy began his stupid and facetious love-making. John Willie wondered whether he had searched the Dancing-Hall thoroughly after all.

The table grew noisy, and there were appreciative grins from other tables; Percy was trying to draw that disgustingly fat manageress on to his knee. And, with the pace thus set by Percy, the whole room woke up. The waiters began to move about more quickly and to call for a.s.sistance, and there was applause as somebody opened the lid of the piano....

John Willie sat before his untouched whiskey-and-soda. He was once more wondering whether it would be worth while to return to the Dancing-Hall, or whether she might not by this time be on the Pier. And again, and ever again, he wondered when and where he had seen her before....

Again Percy's silly joyous voice broke in. He was expostulating with Miss Price.

"Look, Cissie's sitting on Val's----"

"Let be, Mr. Briggs--indeed I will not be pulled about like that!----"

"Then sit on Mr. Garden's--cheer him up--he's looking for Gertie, the Double-Blank from Blackburn, and can't find her----"

"There, now, Mr. Briggs!--Now I shall have to go and get a needle and thread!----"

Somebody interposed.--"Here, chuck it, Percy; somebody might come in.... Hallo, John Willie, you off?"

For John Willie had pushed back his chair. He reached for his hat. "Leave us a lock of your hair for my mourning-brooch," Percy's m.u.f.fled voice came after him, but he was off.

Perhaps she would be at the Wheel....

But she was not at that immense tyre slung with upholstered coaches, nor yet to be seen at the side-shows round about. He left the Kursaal, and joined the dense throng that made a double stream under the Promenade lamps. He told himself he was a fool. She might have left Llanyglo within a few hours of his having seen her--might be back in any of the towns of England or Scotland or Wales by this time. But he did not cease to seek. He reached the Pier again. Drub-drub-drub-drub-drub-drub-drub. It was now solid with flesh, and indeed he had not walked half its length when the closing-bell clanged. The glow over the pier-head Pavilion went suddenly out, and so, a few moments later, did a hundred yards of the lamps on either side. He heard the usual cries of mock-terror. It was no good going up there now....

Nor would she be in the Floral Valley. In fact, he had better give it up. He had better clear out of Llanyglo for a bit. He was sick of this dusty dance of pleasure, and the Wakes crowds would be here in a few days.... He would go and fish up Delyn. The Water Scheme hadn't spoiled the lake; they had only built a quite small dam with locks at one end, and the grid of service-reservoirs was lower down. Sharpe had left the hut. He would go there for a few days and have his bread and mutton and cheese sent up from the inn in the valley below. He would tell Minetta to get somebody to stay with her, and would go in the morning....

He was pa.s.sing the closed fancy-shop at the corner of Gardd Street when he came to this resolution; and suddenly he stopped dead. Minetta!... What was it that the thought of his sister, coming at this moment, reminded him of? It was odd, but it had certainly reminded him of something that had seemed to come near him only to escape him again immediately. Minetta!... He saw Minetta daily. There was nothing new about Minetta. She looked after the house, and if he wasn't going to be in for meals he mentioned the fact, or sometimes didn't, and beyond that, to tell the truth, he didn't very often think of Minetta. He didn't suppose she would ever marry--wasn't that kind. He remembered that years ago that genial idiot Percy Briggs had fancied himself "sweet" on her, but that sketching of hers---- Ah!

John Willie, who had been still standing at the corner, moved slowly forward again. He had got it.

He knew he'd been right! It was a little boast of his that he remembered faces rather well, and the thing that had perplexed him for two days was now clear. In a flash he saw in his mind the Llanyglo of the days of the Briggses and Laceys. He saw a bright diminutive picture of deck-chairs and bathing-tents on the sh.o.r.e, and June Lacey and Wiggie having their fortunes told. And he saw a gipsy child, with a head held as if it had borne an invisible pitcher, and then a foot cut by a piece of gla.s.s, and himself and Percy packed off home in disgrace, and Percy's mother washing the gashed foot with water from a picnic-basket and tying it up with a handkerchief. Then Minetta had come up, and had said that she was going to make a sketch of the child....

Ah! It was she who had stood under the red pier-light, watching that cadmium horn of the moon that lifted itself out of the sea!

II.

JUNE.

As it happened, John Willie did not go off fishing on the morrow. He expected that Minetta would be in bed when he got home, but as he pa.s.sed up the path he saw a light burning high in the front of the house. It was in the room beneath that date-stone under which he had once put a sixpence, and that room, because of its high and uninterrupted view of the sea, was one of the guest-chambers. He wondered who had come.

His supper was laid in the dining-room, but he did not want it, and so pa.s.sed straight upstairs. As he turned along the landing to his own room he heard a door opened on the floor above, and his sister called "Is that you?" He answered, entered his bedroom, and began to undress.

But he had scarcely got his boots unlaced when there came a tap at the door, and Minetta entered. Her dark hair was in plaits, she wore a wrap over her nightdress, and she carried on her hip a tray with two claret-stained gla.s.ses and a salver with a cut cake. Evidently there had been a girls' bedroom orgie.

"Who's come?" John Willie asked, throwing aside his second boot.

"June Lacey. You knew she was coming," Minetta answered accusingly.

"No, I didn't--first I've heard of it."

"You never hear anything when you're reading a newspaper. I told you at breakfast this morning, and that she was going to wire the time of the train. And you were out, and I had to leave everything and go and meet her myself."

"Sorry," John Willie grunted. He remembered now. "I mean, I didn't gather it was to-day."

"Well, I hope you'll manage to spare her an hour or two now that she's here," Minetta said a little crossly. "I did tell her to come just whenever she wished, and she didn't know the Wakes were coming on."

"All right," John Willie yawned. "I was going fishing, that's all; but I won't if you don't want. How long's she staying?"

"At least a fortnight. So don't say I haven't told you that. And do try to be in just occasionally. Have you had supper?"

"I didn't want any, thanks. Sorry I forgot, Min. Say good night to June for me."

Five minutes later he had turned out the gas and tumbled into bed.

Except that she postponed his escape from ennui for a day or two, June's arrival was a matter of indifference to him. He had known her for so long that he regarded her almost as if she had been a split-off portion of Minetta herself, that happened to possess its own apparatus of speech and locomotion. He could no more have said whether she was pretty than he could have said whether Minetta was pretty. It was no trouble to talk to June. As much talk as was necessary came of itself. He had only to say "You remember so-and-so----" or "Like that time when----" and conversation sustained itself out of a hundred trifles desultorily familiar to both of them. That, at any rate, was a comfort. With anybody new he would have had to take a certain amount of trouble. With June it didn't matter.

So, at breakfast the next morning, he did not actually read the newspaper as he ate, but he threw out a remark from time to time as it were over the edge of an imaginary newspaper, and then asked June what she would like to do that morning. When she replied that she wanted him to do just whatever he had intended to do, he even hoisted himself to the level of a little ceremoniousness, and told her that he had no plans at all save to amuse her--what about a bathe, the morning Concert in the Pavilion, a drive in the afternoon, and so on? By keeping to this beaten track of enjoyment, he could, at one and the same time, be entertaining June and keeping an eye open for that gipsy girl who haunted his imagination.

"A bathe?" said June.... "Oh, of course! How stupid of me! I'd forgotten there was mixed bathing here now. What a change!... Wasn't there a frightful row about it?"

There had been a row, but it had been short and sharp. Briefly, Blackpool and Douglas and Llandudno had settled the matter for them, and, after a protest for conscience's sake--and also a little more well-judged absenteeism--even Howell Gruffydd, now Chairman of the Council, and John Pritchard, a Councillor in his second year, had yielded. A portion of the sh.o.r.e had been set apart for this "playing with fire," but within a year even this had become a dead letter. The only thing that now distinguished this portion of the beach from the rest was a certain heightened jocundity in the advertis.e.m.e.nts on the sides of the bathing-machines at that spot. The virtues of Pills and Laxatives were a little more loudly announced there, and this heartiness and lack of false shame culminated in a long h.o.a.rding that was erected on one of the groynes, and bore on one side the legend "THE NAKED TRUTH" (which was that Somebody's Remedies were the Best), and on the other the words "TO THE PURE" (who were warned against Fraudulent Imitations). For the rest folk now bathed where they would.

So, idly, John Willie told June of the town's struggle between its principles and its living, and then they rose from the table. When June heard that Minetta wasn't coming with them she wanted to stay behind and help; but Minetta persuaded her that she would only be in the way, and that anyway she couldn't help her with her painting; and presently, with towels and costumes, she and John Willie went forth and, after a casual discussion about its being rather soon after breakfast to bathe, descended to the beach.

June was certainly a pretty enough girl for even a fastidious young man to be seen about with. No neater shoes than those that moved beneath the gypsophylla of her petticoats were to be seen on the whole Promenade, and she held her longish figure trimly, and was almost on the "fast" side with her little thin switch of a cane. She was an inch taller than John Willie, too, which was another inch of smartness to be seen walking with. He found her a bathing-machine and secured another for himself; and when, presently, they lay on their backs side by side a hundred yards farther out from the sh.o.r.e than anybody else, with the sun hot on their faces and their eyes blinking up at the intense blue, they continued to talk as they had talked before--of who had been to Llanyglo lately and who had not, and of what had become of Mrs. Maynard, and whether anybody had seen Hilda Morrell lately, and whether that London man--what was his name--Mr. Ashton--had been heard of since. John Willie, for his part, asked how Mrs. Lacey and Wiggie were, and told June what a lot was thought of her father's laying out of the Kursaal Gardens, and asked her when the work was expected to be finished.

Then they came in again, dressed, and regained the Promenade.

John Willie was surprised to find how quickly the morning went. The Concert was half over by the time they reached the Pavilion, and when the Concert was over and the drub-drub on the boards of the Pier became incessant, June said that, build as they would, it would be a long time before they built on the Trwyn. To that John Willie replied that he wasn't so sure, and told her of how at one time it had been a toss-up whether they wouldn't make a terrace there and build the "Imperial" on it; and June's reply was that she would never have thought it. Then John Willie looked at his watch, and at first thought it must have stopped, the time had flown so. They turned their faces to the Promenade again, and at a Booking Kiosk John Willie ordered a landau for half-past two. Minetta (he told June) would have finished her work by then, and the three of them could go either out Abercelyn way, or through Porth Neigr and round home, or along the Delyn road, just as June wished. June said that if she really had her choice, she would like the Abercelyn drive, because it was years since she had been there, and she would like to see how much it had altered.

So out towards Abercelyn the three of them went that afternoon, and June's eyes opened wide at the Sarn manganese sidings, and John Willie told her to mind that gypsophylla of her petticoats against the coal-heaps and grease-boxes of the wagons. Then back in the landau again, he took a well-earned rest while Minetta and June talked. He leaned back against the hot leather, and smoked and watched them, and wondered, first, whether anybody would ever marry Minetta, and, next, whether anybody would ever marry June, and then all at once found himself wondering about the gipsy girl again.

Suppose he should take seats for June and Minetta at some entertainment that evening, should see them comfortably settled, and should then go out for another look for her?...

But, now that he knew who she was, he thought of her, somehow, ever so slightly differently. He was no less set on finding her; indeed he was more set; but part of the possible surprise and excitement had certainly gone. Had he apparently not been destined not to see her again, the thing would have been less of an adventure than he had at first supposed. There would have been far fewer discoveries to make. It might even have been difficult to talk to her. He could talk pleasantly to June and be thinking of something else all the time; but he could hardly have asked Ynys Lovell how her mother was getting on with her chair-mending and fortune-telling, or have told her that he had heard that her kinsman Dafydd Dafis had won the "penillion" contest at the Eisteddfod....

Ah!---- Again he had it, and, lying back on the hot leather of the hired landau, wondered that he had not had it sooner. Of course--Dafydd Dafis. If anybody knew where she was, Dafydd would know. That was what he would do that evening while Minetta and June were at the Concert. He would take a stroll to Dafydd's house (which was no longer the single-roomed cottage near the old Independent Chapel, but a two-roomed one in Maengwyn Street), and he would sit down and have a smoke and ask Dafydd how all was with him....

At this point he became conscious that June was speaking to him. She was offering him a penny for his thoughts. Instantly he fell into the rut of easy conversation again. It took him hardly a moment to find a topic.

"Eh?" he said.... "Oh!--You can have them for nothing. I was just thinking of that place of the Kerrs in Pontnewydd Street. I suppose you've heard all about that?"

"No, I've not heard a word," June declared. "Do tell me!"

After all, it was but a step from his real thought to the narrative he now told June. Between Dafydd Dafis and Tommy Kerr was now the a.s.sociation of an all but declared feud, which would break out into open enmity the moment anything happened to Tommy's brother Ned. More than any man in Llanyglo Dafydd had writhed at that wonderful building of the Hafod Unos, and since then he had remembered something else that had set him darkly flushing. It had been Tommy Kerr (or one of his boon companions--it came to the same thing) who, when Dafydd had returned rapt after the first day of the Eisteddfod, had cast two-pence on the ground and had drunkenly demanded a song. Yes, that remark, scarce heard at the time, had come back since. They had offered him, Dafydd, their dirty dross in exchange for Song, and had bidden him stoop to pick it up....

And that mortal insult had reminded Dafydd of an older memory still. This was, that of the four Kerrs, Tommy had been the only one who had not tumbled into that open boat when that chilling cry of "Llongddrylliad!" had sounded on that stormy night years and years before. That that had not been Tommy's fault mattered nothing; as soon as Dafydd had remembered this he had felt himself released from the last shadow of an obligation. It was another stick to beat Tommy with and "beating him" now meant, as everybody knew, waiting until his brother died and then "purring" him out of the Hafod, if not by fair means, then--well, purring him out none the less.

And that stick Tommy was to be beaten with was only the latest of many. It was a whole history of sticks--of the Council's Sons of Belial set at Tommy, collectors, inspectors of this and that and the other, policemen to apprehend him for drunkenness, sergeants to warn publicans that if they harboured Tommy they might be made to feel it in other ways.... But lately they had withdrawn this last prohibition. Putting their heads together, they had judged it best that Tommy should drink all he could, and more.... He had done so, and did not seem a single penny the worse for it. Moreover, he had now openly declared himself an abominator of Welshmen and everything else Welsh. Nightly he zig-zagged home crying out against the whole smiling, thievish crew, their Kursaals and Pavilions and Dancing-Halls and Concerts Llanyglo. He lurched along Pontnewydd Street after everybody else had gone to bed, roaring "Glan Meddwdod Mwyn." How he had twenty times escaped breaking his neck when they had laid down the Pontnewydd Street tramlines n.o.body knew.... And whenever he remembered that they wanted his Hafod and would have it as soon as Ned died, he offered to give it away to any Welshman who would repeat after him, word for word ... but his forms of words varied widely, and no more than the Amalekites could some of those against whom he railed p.r.o.nounce his words that began with "sh."

So John Willie, as the landau bowled homewards, had to tell June all this, and June was extraordinarily interested. Minetta watched them both, and, in her turn, wondered about John Willie and his marrying. She liked to have June to visit her; she wasn't so sure that she wanted June as a standing ornamental dish. Indeed she rather thought she didn't, and, allowing for many large but still accidental differences, Minetta was not without a trace of the malicious humour of Tommy Kerr himself.

In fairness she had to admit, however, that so far there were no signs that June was setting her cap at John Willie.

That night again, however, John Willie had little luck of his searching, this time of Dafydd Dafis. He sought him at his home, he sought him abroad, but he failed to find him and he joined June and his sister again where they sat listening to The Lunas, those incomparable Drawing-Room Entertainers. He bought them chocolate and he bought them ices, and then, at the end of the performance, he proposed a walk along the Promenade before they turned in. Not to lose them, he pa.s.sed an arm through either of theirs, his sister's arm and that of this tall and pretty and undisturbing extension of his sister. They set their faces towards the Pier that stretched like a sparkling finger out to sea.

It was the hour of the ebb, and lately, at that hour, an odd and new activity had begun to make sharper that contrast between the bright and crowded and restless Promenade and the solemn void that pushed as it were its dark breast against that two-miles-long chain of gold and silver lamps, straining the slender fetter into a curve. Down below the railings, at three or four points, not more, an upturned face with tightly shut eyes was praying aloud. They looked like little floating, drowned, yet speaking masks. Each evangelist had his little knot of three or four companions, but these had come with him, and of hearers they had none. They stood on the trampled sand, just below the gas-lighted line of pebbles; a boat drawn up, or a yard or two of groyne, struggled between light and shadow beyond them; far out in the bay the twinkle of a solitary light could be seen; the rest was blackness and immensity. It made Infinity seem strangely weak. Here It was, striving to make Itself known to the finite, Its sole instrument a little oval mask and a voice that could not be heard five yards away; and never a head was turned. Calling and laughing, the babel of their voices like the rattle of the pebbles that roll back with the retiring wave, they pa.s.sed and pa.s.sed and pa.s.sed. One would have said that some vast angelic skater had cut that sweeping outside-edge of light, and then, repulsed, had rushed away into the darkness again.

And this was something else for John Willie to tell this pretty, unexigent June. It had only been going on about a fortnight, he said, but he didn't think they'd heard the last of it yet. There was a Revival or something coming slowly up the coast, he said, and--who did June think was doing it?--why, Eesaac Oliver Gruffydd!

"Never!" June exclaimed.

"Rather! You remember him, don't you? Howell Gruffydd the grocer's son; pale-faced chap, with a great lump of hair; and by Jove, he is stirring 'em up! He started at Aberystwith, and worked his way up through Aberdovey and Towyn and Barmouth and Portmadoc, with no end of crowds following him wherever he went. I expect he'll be here presently. If he comes when the Wakes are on there will be a shindy!... I say, aren't you feeling a bit cold? Better be getting along home. I'll take you as far as the corner, and then if you don't mind I'll leave you--I want to find a man if I can----"

Five minutes later he had got rid of them, and stood in meditation. Was it worth while trying for Dafydd Dafis again? Or taking another stroll along the Pier? Perhaps it wasn't. He was rather tired, and this seemed a stupid kind of thing he had been doing for the last few days. He'd potter about with June for another day--perhaps he had rather neglected Minetta lately--and then for the fishing up Delyn. In that way he would be off just as the Wakes people arrived. Already the lodging-house keepers were getting ready for them, putting away their ornaments and so on. They would be here on Friday night; to-day was Wednesday; John Willie would be off on Friday morning.

This time he kept to his decision. He walked about with the pretty and untroublesome June all the next morning, and in the afternoon Minetta joined them. She approved warmly of his fishing-plan, and said she was sure the change would do him good. He told them to keep away from the crowds and not to be out too late, and then, on the Friday morning set off.

When, at nine o'clock the same night, he walked up the path again and appeared in the dining-room just as June and Minetta were thinking of going to bed, Minetta stared. She had thought him miles away.

She stared still harder when he mumbled that he had "forgotten something," and intended to be off again in the morning.

III.

DELYN.