Mushroom Town Part 4

"They finiss their breakfast--I heard them wipe the frying-pan out as plain as if I see it with my eyes!"

Again John Pritchard's heavy voice: "Finiss their breakfast indeed! They finiss a whole barrel of beer!"

"And it is right what Hugh Morgan says," another struck in. "That Ned Kerr, he know Wales as well as I know my two hands! I have let-ter from my cousin Thomas Thomas in Towyn, and he say they buy lot-t of alders up the Dysynni two years ago of Mr. Llewelyn Jones of Abergynolwyn, and set up a hut in the 'ood, and make their clog soles, and pay six-pence a foot for the trees."

"He set up more than a hut at Llanyglo, whatever!"

"Indeed they do no such thing! The Hafod Unos belong to the old days. There iss no new Hafod Unos I don't know this how many years!"

"All the old things was new things once, Hugh Morgan."

Then, as if all at once they saw anew that house so magically sprung up out of the sand, there fell a silence. Howell Gruffydd might make his jests about taking a larger shop and forming a Limited Company, but the hard fact remained, that aliens had squatted down at Llanyglo while they had slept, and, by force or process of law, might be difficult to turn out again. Howell's jocosity subsided; among the children's forms and benches they took counsel together; and when, at half-past ten, John Pritchard's eldest lad came in with the news that one of the Kerrs had departed along the Porth Neigr road, while the other three kept guard over what they had won, they drew closer together still, and spoke in low tones of boycott.

Then suddenly somebody asked what Mr. Tudor Williams of Ponteglwys would say, and the quick little outburst of "Yes, indeed," "Well said," "Mr. Tudor Williams have some-thing to say," showed how pertinent the observation was considered. For Mr. Tudor Williams, the Member, would be able to tell them, if anybody could, whether the Hafod Unos was countenanced by the Law, and whether the intruders could be served with notice to quit. His promised visit now took on an added urgency.

"It is a pit-ty Mr. Williams fall out with Squire Wynne," Hugh Morgan remarked. "It will be the Squire who will have to give them notice, whatever."

"They quarrel one day outside the Court at Porth Neigr."

"But indeed, Howell Gruffydd, Mr. Tudor Williams wa.s.s in the right--it was about the t.i.thes, and the t.i.the iss a wick-ked system----"

"Aw-w-w, but the Welss Members they alter all that very soon!"

"But the Squire and the Bis-sop of St. Asaph is great friends----"

"Indeed that Bis-sop of St. Asaph he look at a Chap-pil like as if it wa.s.s not worth his eyesight!"

Dafydd Dafis, who sat on a child's bench, looking moodily at the floor, had not spoken yet. He gave a quick glance up, and then looked down again.

"The Church iss a great robber," he muttered within his moustache....

They discussed questions of ecclesiastical polity....

"It iss a great robber," said Dafydd Dafis, again resuming his former att.i.tude.

Then Howell Gruffydd rose, and one or two others followed his example. There was the day's work to be done. Soon all moved to the door, but before going about their businesses they went to take another look at that astonishing house.

But they looked only from a distance. If they had a.s.sumed that the Kerrs, having worked all night, would now be sleeping, they were wrong. They could see them, three of them, still busily walling, filling, shovelling out sand.

"They try to finiss before Sunday," Hugh Morgan said.

But big John Pritchard glared sternly at him.

"They care noth-thing for Sunday, those ones," he said. "That other one will have gone for more beer." And he added, in solemn tones, "It iss a den of li-ons!"

The fencing dispute had now sunk into insignificance.

It quickly appeared, even as John Pritchard had said, that the Kerrs cared nothing for Sunday. At a quarter to ten on the morning of that day, Howell Gruffydd, in his tight black frock-coat and bowler hat, pa.s.sing up the sandy gully on his way to the Methodist Chapel, heard sounds of carousing. He turned aside to look. The door of the Hafod stood open, and a second barrel of beer, together with provisions and some sticks of furniture, had been fetched during the night. Tommy, the youngest of the Kerrs, was already drunk and singing. The eldest of them, seeing Howell Gruffydd, gave him an insolently familiar nod, as if he had as much right to be there as anybody else.

"Cold mornin'," he said. "Are ye coming in to hev' a tot?"

Howell turned away.

After service, Howell encountered John Pritchard. John, too, had heard that G.o.dless levity from afar. Others gathered round them by the gap in the thymy earth-wall, and John raised his voice on high. It shook with bitter zeal.

"We hear them in the Chap-pil, in the mid-dle of prayers, singing!" he cried. "On a Sunday morning they sing; they sing 'Thomas, make Room for your Uncle!' I said it was a den of li-ons, but indeed no li-ons ever behave so s'ock-kingly! They sing 'Thomas, make Room for your Uncle,' in the mid-dle of prayers, like if it was out of the belly of h.e.l.l!"

Dafydd Dafis, whose head for a day and a half had drooped like a wet head of corn, gave a quick gleaming glance.

"They not build it any more quick than it can be pulled down again," he said quickly. "They come out of the house sometime to work, I think. They not gentry with lot of money, whatever."

And that was true. The Kerrs could hardly earn their living by drinking beer and having continually to mount guard over the house they had made.

"There will be no peace in Llanyglo now till Mr. Tudor Williams has been."

Dafydd Dafis's head drooped again.

"Indeed we do not need Mr. Tudor Williams for this," he muttered under his breath.

And the Kerrs themselves? Did they suppose they could plant themselves thus in the enemy's midst and not meet with hostile entertainment?

For this we may perhaps go once more to the gentleman without whose friendly help the Llanyglo Guide would have been done quite as well as it needed to be, and in half the time.

"It's difficult to say, for two reasons," this gentleman said. "In the first place, the humour of some of these Lancashire fellows is such an incalculable thing; you never know how far they will carry it, nor how soon it will end in black eyes and b.l.o.o.d.y noses. And in the second place, there was that humanitarian scatterbrain, Armfield. I believe myself that probably Armfield had already told Ned Kerr that there would be work presently....

"Of course, you've heard what Armfield's scheme was. The Syndicate had decided not to rectify any more errors of Providence about the disposition of coal and manganese; they only wanted to clear out altogether, leaving somebody else 'holding the baby'--I believe that's the expression. Their idea was simplicity itself: to buy land at a shilling and sell it again at ten; but they didn't express it quite so nakedly. That was where Terry Armfield came in--to dress the enterprise up and make it attractive. As long as he enabled them to cut their loss they didn't care what he did with Llanyglo.

"And there was nothing really wrong with the scheme, except that Terry was twenty years before his time, and naturally had to suffer for it. I think he called it 'The Thelema Estate Development Company,' and nowadays it would be called a Garden City. And if Terry hadn't Edward Garden's sense of the line of least resistance, you must remember that he hadn't Edward Garden's 'inside' information either. He had nothing but that ecstatic power of persuading people. And he did persuade them. I doubt if half a dozen of the people he sold to ever saw the place. Two of them did, though, two brothers, in the produce line. They went down, and came back again, and quietly sold out, keeping strictly to Terry's representations; and I believe they warned Terry then that if he wasn't careful he'd be getting into trouble. I asked them what they'd been thinking of to let themselves be persuaded by a hare-brained enthusiast like that. They told me it was all very well for me to talk now. They knew perfectly well all the time that it was only one of Terry's dreams of a better and a brighter world, but they bought for all that, and so did crowds of others. Terry didn't admit a single difficulty. He talked about angels and the higher life. He talked about Pugin and the soul's need for seasons of contemplation and repose. He talked about the air and the sea and the mountains and the Trwyn, and he made it out to be Llanyglo's chief merit that it took a whole day to get there.... And so on. To cut it short, they were to do their own building, but Terry, as vendor, undertook the rest--laying out certain roads, draining and lighting them, I believe the building of a sort of public hall, and so forth. I don't think he said anything about the Chapels.

"And that (to get back where we started from) is probably the reason the Kerrs stood by."

Whether Dafydd Dafis would have watched the Kerrs out of the Hafod, or, failing that, whether he would have pulled it down over their heads, is hardly worth debating; for, as it happened, that very Sunday night there befell something that for the time being had all the effect of a declared truce between the hamlet and its invaders. Something deeper and more solemn than the machinations of man took a hand in the making of Llanyglo. This was the wind. It began to get up at about three o'clock that afternoon; all day there had been a swell; and Dafydd Dafis and others, returning from Howell Gruffydd's house (where a second letter to Mr. Tudor Williams Ponteglwys had been written, as urgent as Eesaac Oliver's pen could make it), saw all four of the brothers on the roof, trying to secure the tarpaulin in which the wind volleyed; their roof-slates were not expected till the following Wednesday. The ground was a blurr of flying sand; the sea resembled a tossing fleece as far as the eye could see; and from moment to moment the waves, breaking over the Trwyn, rose in slow, gigantic fountains, fell again, and then came the roar. The four men clung like limpets to the roof, crouching until the worst gusts were past and then resuming their hammering. They were trying to nail the covering down, using pieces of wood as washers to prevent the material from ripping.

Suddenly Dafydd Dafis, looking up under his brows, saw Ned Kerr pause with his hammer lifted and peer out to sea. Then, without moving his head, Ned put up his hand and appeared to be shouting something to the others. All four looked, and so did the men of Llanyglo, but from the ground below they could see nothing.

Then, all in a moment, Ned Kerr gave a scramble and a spring, came down like a bundle into a mound of soft sand, and was followed tumblingwise by the others. There was a rip and a crack, and the released tarpaulin was a hundred yards away, flapping grotesquely over the sandhills. Ned was up again in an instant, and as he pa.s.sed Dafydd Dafis at a run he shouted a single word in Welsh: "Llongddrylliad!"

It was a wreck.

The boats by the short thumb of a jetty had not been used for a week, and lay high up the beach. Could they have got them through that boiling of white sea and brown sand there was a towering ridge to be seen beyond, maned with spray, that rushed forward and burst only to show another in the same place. No more than one at a time could be seen. The boats were open boats, and night was coming on. Small wonder there seemed little to do but pray.

But Ned Kerr shouted another word.--"Bad!"

From the top of the Hafod he had seen a ship's boat.

The next moment he and Dafydd Dafis had each a shoulder to Hugh Morgan's boat, and William Morgan, the three remaining Kerrs, and another man, were hauling. All save the youngest Kerr continued to tumble aboard as the boat lifted. He tried to struggle after it, but was overturned, and they dragged him out and turned him upside down to pour the water out of him.

They have a lifeboat now at Llanyglo, The Ratchet, presented and maintained by the town of that name; but that night the men of Lancashire and the men of Llanyglo went out in one of the half-dozen open boats. They put her into the brown, and a moment later the water had slipped from under her and she sat down on the sand, with every plank started. They got ash.o.r.e again as best they could, and raced for another boat and more oars. They put out again. They dare not use the wooden jetty, of which only the beginning could be seen. The first boat was already matchwood. A sea crawled up the Trwyn almost as far as the Light. They inspected its ravage the next day. It stood as a record for many years.

Then the boat pa.s.sed the brown, and stood out to that pale wall smoking with spray. The wall came on and broke with a crash that shook the sh.o.r.e. A woman gave a shrill scream ... then they saw the boat again---- It seemed madness to think that that open boat would be safer out beyond---- After that, though they watched, they saw nothing.

Then the Trwyn Light opened its eye, two reds and a white. All Llanyglo was gathered on the beach, and none thought of going to Chapel. Night fell; the sky became clear as black ice; the dim seas resembled a lair of white bears at play. Seven o'clock pa.s.sed, and eight.... Already in folks' minds the grim thought was born; it might have been worse. They had dragged Hugh Morgan back as the second boat had pushed off, and none of the Llanyglo men was married. Whether the three Kerrs were married or not n.o.body knew.

Nine o'clock came....

Blodwen Gruffydd saw the return first, if, indeed, that vague speck lost in the grey combings were they. Again the wave came on, and another hideous range lifted its grey ridge.... By a miracle, it boiled far away to right and left, but rolled, a grey-dappled dead weight, under the boat. Already half a dozen men with a rope were waist-deep in the water....

Then, as the boat crawled on its oars like an insect, another crest rose, tilted them so that man fell on man, and a man came out....

They at the rope were swept out by the backwash to meet them....

And after all, they had come back empty-handed. They had seen neither ship nor boat.

But (and this, in this tale of Llanyglo and of those who made it and were made by it, is the point), an hour later Dafydd Dafis, opening his eyes for the first time since he had been hauled out of the water, said something in Welsh to John Pritchard, who bent over him. Translated it ran: "I would not pull that one's house down."

Then he closed his eyes again.

As far as the Hafod Unos was concerned, Mr. Tudor Williams's visit now seemed superfluous.

VII.

THE MEMBER.

Ostensibly, Mr. Tudor Williams came to Llanyglo to a.s.sist at a Sasiwn, which is a gathering very much like the Love Feasts of other parts of the country (indeed, if memory serves, Mr. Wesley gave these a.s.semblies for prayer and mutual consolation the latter name as far north in Wales as Builth--but then Mr. Wesley did not speak Welsh). Neither the fencing dispute nor the question of the Hafod Unos had taken nominal precedence of this. But Mr. Tudor Williams's visit was also something more. He was a Member returning to his own const.i.tuency--exalted, yet their servant, familiar with the great ones of the land, yet by their favour. For that reason they liked him to bring the evidences of his greatness back with him.

Mr. Tudor Williams did so, and handsomely. He was a small nimble man with black brows and a ragged silvery moustache, and a very erect and conscious carriage of the head. He wore a silk hat, a turned-down collar with a flat black bow, a frockcoat with voluminous lapels of watered silk, grey trousers, and new black kid gloves. He drove from Porth Neigr in the carriage that had been lent him by a political supporter, and alighted at the gap opposite John Pritchard's farm. They would have run forward to greet him, but a certain awe of his clothes and equipage combined with their own dignity as makers and unmakers of such as he to keep them where they stood, in a semicircle across the road.

But if they were at one and the same time a little intimidated and filled out with pride in him, Mr. Tudor Williams knew no hesitation. He sprang down from the carriage, grasped John Pritchard by the hand, and then, not content with that, patted him all up the arm as far as the shoulder and across the breast with the other hand, as if he conferred invisible decorations on him. His eyes were moist, but glad greetings flowed from his tongue, in an accent that would have put the most diffident speaker of English at his ease.

"Well, John Pritchard! Well, well! Indeed you have not grown any less! A lit-tle man like me, I hardly reach up to your shoulder! Aw-w-w, you look splen-did! I was spik-king of you a few days ago to the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs--but dear me, here am I neglecting the ladies--I tell you presently--How are you, Mrs. Gruffydd? This young man is never Eesaac Oliver! Aw-w-w, how he grows! Did you write the let-ter to me, Eesaac Oliver? That's the style! Education, knowledge--it is a grand thing!--Now, Dafydd Dafis! And how is the harp? You sing me Y Gadlys by and by: 'Mae cynhwrf yn y ceunant, Ar derfyn dydd y gad----'

--dear, dear, you have to go away before you can come home again! There is nothing like this over there; there is not the sym-pathy; as I was saying to the Member for Caermarthen, Mr. Hughes Caegwynion, not three, four days ago, 'You get no sym-pathy from England and the Englishman'--and indeed you do not.--Here comes Howell Gruffydd, run-ning (indeed he runs like a deer, Mrs. Gruffydd!).--Now, Howell Gruffydd, you miss the train if you don't look sharp (he's making so much money he cannot leave the shop for a min-nit!).--Now, my old friend William Morgan! How is the rheumatics?--How are you, Hugh?--Is this your youngest, Mrs. Roberts? Hwhat! Another since! Aw-w-w--and you more like an elder sister than a mother!... And there is the Trwyn, just the same----"

He was staying the night with John Pritchard, and the two moved away to the house, the others following a yard or two behind. Mr. Tudor Williams advanced to ancient Mrs. Pritchard's chair, took the hand that resembled a dead bird's foot, and shouted in her ear: "You see I do not lose a min-nit before I come to see you, Mrs. Pritchard!" he cried in Welsh. ("Indeed she is a wonderful old 'ooman!)--How many grandchildren have you now, Mrs. Pritchard?" (The old woman nodded her aged head.) "Great-grandchildren! No-o-o! Think of that! But I think you all live for ever at Llanyglo. It is not like London. If I could take bagsfull of this air back with me I make my for-tune!--Now, Miss Pritchard, I think I must have offended you, you are so long in spik-king to me! And how is all in school? I tell you press-ently something straight from the Board of Ed-u-ca-tion for you to try. You whisper a subject in the scholar's ear as he comes in at the door, and he walk straight to the middle of the room, no time for think-king, and speak for five minutes about it! That will make them ready speakers, hwhat? That will accustom them to public life and speaking in the Chapel? But I tell you later.--Now, my old friend John, if I could wash my hands before sitting down to a cup of tea--then we will talk----"

He was shown into the best bedroom, with the cork-framed funeral-cards and the cardboard watch-pockets on the walls, and the sound of his moving about and pouring out water and spluttering as he washed his face could be heard by those who waited below. Then he descended again and sat down.

"Well," he said by and by, from his place where he sat at the table alone, they respectfully yet proprietorially watching him eat and drink his tea, "now tell me about those matters in the letter you wrote.... I mean the other matters...."

But let us, before we pa.s.s to the other matters, look at the company that watched Mr. Tudor Williams eat.

First there was John Pritchard, sitting on the other side of the table with his hands upon his knees, and now and then turning his body a little aside and bowing his back to cough. There was John, stern religionist, believing in G.o.d and Disendowment; obstinate, dull, just, unsmiling; as ready for the Day of Judgment as if it had been the audit-day of the accounts he kept as princ.i.p.al trustee of the Baptist Chapel. For all that he was so rooted in Llanyglo that he had never travelled farther than Porth Neigr in the whole of his life, he was as ardent a supporter of Missionary Endeavour abroad as his voice was powerful at the Sasiwn at home. He watched Mr. Tudor Williams's plate, and with his thumb made signs for his daughter to replenish it.

Next, there was Howell Gruffydd, with his pale and studious son, Eesaac Oliver. You might have been sure even then that, should Llanyglo ever grow, Howell Gruffydd's fortune would grow with it. Howell considered a good penny worth the putting into his pocket, and, as if his ap.r.o.n (which, however, he had now left behind at the shop) had made half a housewife of him, he cared nothing, so it brought in money, whether he did a man's labour or washed up the dishes or black-leaded the grate. He could not read, but if at Porth Neigr a stranger chanced to ask him the way, he would smile and reply, "There is the signpost," allowing it to be understood that his questioner might read as well as he himself. Howell had his inner dream. It was of a shop with two large windows, and a bell inside the door, and brightly varnished showcards, and pyramids of tinned salmon, and peas within the window that should suggest the noses of children flattened against the pane, and handbills distributed in the streets, and two a.s.sistants, and a son at College, who should read for two, and perhaps--who knew?--sit while his const.i.tuents watched him eat his tea--Mr. Eesaac Oliver Gruffydd, M.P.

Then, with his cap in his hands and his feet shifting nervously, there was Dafydd Dafis, next to Eesaac Oliver, on the sofa. Should purchases and rumoured purchases of land prove to be a portent, Dafydd had all to lose and nothing to gain by change. With that soft cruelty of his of which the hard and more profoundly sentimental Englishman knows nothing, Dafydd was at least disinterested. The Kerrs he had forborne to harm, but he only hated them the more on that account. He himself would not have killed one of the blue and primrose b.u.t.terflies that in the summer hovered over the Llanyglo buffets of wild thyme, and he could not understand a country that said it was fond of animals and yet, like these Lancashire men, hunted rats with terriers and coursed hares with dogs. Alone of that nation he had for a time loved delicate little Minetta Garden, and had told her stories of fairies and had sung Serch Hudol and Mentra Gwen to her; but Minetta had gone. All the things for which Dafydd Dafis cared had gone, or were going, and Dafydd was lonely. He told his harp so, with those warped and stealing fingers, and the harp made music of his pain. All that Dafydd would gain by change would be memories that became ever the more poignant the more they were attenuated, and the less the world cared for him and his unprofitable life.

Pa.s.sing constantly between Mr. Tudor Williams and the saucepan where the eggs boiled, or the plate in the fender where the lightcakes kept hot, was Miss Nancy (nee Nansi) Pritchard, schoolmistress and virtual custodian of the Post Office. The development of Llanyglo, did that ever come to pa.s.s, would be a good thing for Nancy, for otherwise there was none in Llanyglo to marry her, and to domestic service elsewhere she could not have stooped. She was tall and plump and ruddy, with black hair and black-lashed blue eyes, and in her conversation she gave the preference to the longer words. She had been to school in Bangor, wore the longest skirts in Llanyglo, and between her and her father's guest was the bond of their common superiority to everybody else there. She was a partie, for John Pritchard was well-to-do; but for whom? Apparently for n.o.body whom Llanyglo had yet seen.

The remaining spectators, with the exception of old Mrs. Pritchard, who resembled a mummy rather than a spectator, partook in varying degrees of these same characteristics; and there at the table sat Mr. Tudor Williams, M.P., of Ponteglwys, one of his eyes aflow with tears of sensibility while the other was glued to the main chance; Baptist, nationalist, and arguer by metaphor and a.n.a.logy; an elocutionist, and a maker of elocutionists by that process of education that consists of giving a scholar a subject and bidding him straightway speak for five minutes upon it; and, above all, ever and again suggesting, by slight gesture or quick glance, that his secret thought was that there, in cap or corduroys, but for the Grace of G.o.d, went Mr. Tudor Williams of Ponteglwys....

At last he put up his hand, refusing to eat more.

"No more, no more indeed! It is the best bread and but-ter I have tasted since I was here before, but I should be ill in my stomach.--Dear me, John Pritchard, the happy hours I have spent in this room! 'Mid Pleas-sures and Palaces'--indeed there is tears in my eyes when I see the dres-ser with the plates on it, and the jugs, and Mrs. Prit-chard's Bible in the window, just the same as when I was a boy!--Well, I have had a splen-did tea at all events, and if you will excuse me a min-nit I will return thanks for it.... Now, my friends!----"

Five minutes later, Mr. Tudor Williams, not so near to the Kerrs' Hafod that he had the appearance of specially watching it, nor yet so far from it but that he could see Ned Kerr and his brother Sam setting a rough window-sash into position, was once more shaking hands and patting shoulders and exchanging greetings with such of the men and women and children of Llanyglo as he had not yet seen.

And now that they had got him there they hardly knew what they wanted of him. That building exploit of the Kerrs having thrust the Inclosures Dispute a good deal into the background, and Dafydd Dafis's honourable if sullen refusal to injure men who had risked their lives with him having given that exploit itself a kind of condonation, it seemed as if their Member had merely come to a Sasiwn after all. But land had changed hands: they had a vague sense of impending change and of the discomfort of change; and, as they answered their Member's questions, the very presence in their midst of this man who moved behind the scenes of the drama of large events accentuated this feeling.

"What is he like, this one?" Mr. Tudor Williams asked, gently yet absent-mindedly patting big John Pritchard's back as he stooped to cough. They had been speaking of Terry Armfield.

They described Terry as he had appeared to them in the Court at Porth Neigr.

"Is he taking over any other land?" ...

You would not have supposed, from the way in which Mr. Tudor Williams, M.P., asked the question that he merely sought to know how much they knew. And it had not occurred to Llanyglo that these transfers of land might be, not an end, but only a beginning. Yet Mr. Tudor Williams had good, if private reasons, for knowing that this very land might soon be more than merely worth acquiring.... He was not deceiving them. It pleased them to think that their Member was the repository of weighty secrets, and he was merely indulging this simple and legitimate liking. But already he intended to go to Liverpool in order to find out what this Syndicate's plans really were. He wanted to know whether the Syndicate, in its turn, was aware of something else, something still very secret indeed, so secret that five minutes at certain keyholes might have been worth many thousands of pounds....

"And this Hafod Unos--on whose land is it erected?" he next asked.

He made a little grimace when they told him, on Squire Wynne's.

"Then perhaps he will let it stand; he is cracked in his head about old customs, and antiquities, and suchlike foolishness, when there is great work wait-ing to be done. It is not our business if he likes to let these people squat upon his land."

But here John Pritchard interposed heavily.

"But it is our business if they sing 'Thomas, make Room for your Uncle' in the middle of prayers," he said.

"No-o-o!" exclaimed Mr. Tudor Williams, shocked. Perhaps also he wished to gain a little time; he had no wish to call upon Squire Wynne, either about this or anything else. "Don't tell me they did that!" he added.

"Indeed, they did," said John quickly.

"Aw-w-w!--But it is a Liberal maxim, John, and Radical, too, that force is no remedy. In my opinion our friend Dafydd here----" he put his arm affectionately about Dafydd Dafis's waist, "--was a lit-tle headstrong about burning the fences."

"I will not burn their house," said Dafydd sullenly. (By the way, had the case been altered, it is doubtful whether the Kerrs would have done as much for him.) "Well--we can always take what the doc-tor told the man who wanted information for noth-thing to take--advice," said Mr. Tudor Williams.

"It would be better to see Mr. Wynne first," said John Pritchard. "If one comes others may come, and indeed I never saw such behaviour, no, not in a den of li-ons!"

They continued to discuss the matter, while, before their eyes, the Kerrs fitted their window-sash.

Yet it was curious to note how, within the bond of their pa.s.sionate, if loquacious nationalism, each man was jealously for himself. It was not that their democracy was more conspicuously lacking in democrats than are other democracies; perhaps it was rather that the Welshman recognises two ties and two ties only--the tie of unity against the foreigner, and the private claim of his strong family affections. Between these two things is his void and vulnerable place. He has not set up for himself the Englishman's stiff and serviceable and systematised falsity of Compromise, that has no justification save that it works. He has his age-long tradition, but no daily rule that can (and indeed must) be applied without question. Each of his acts is his first act, and so a retail act. Because his hypocrisy lacks the magnificent scope of that of the Saxon, he bears the odium of a personal stealthiness. Thus, perhaps, it comes about that while too strict an adherence to the letter is the Englishman's ever-present danger, for his brother Celt the spirit slayeth. n.o.ble dreams, petty acts; and here, if a little obscurely, may be hidden the reason why, when he seeks his fortune in London, his greatest successes are the minor successes of drapery and milk....