My Neighbors Part 2

"My dear child shall go to Heaven like a Princess," she said; and she sat at her work table to fashion a robe of fine cambric and lace for her dead.

Disturbed by the noise of the machine, Lisbeth wailed: "You let me starve but won't let me sleep. Why doesn't any one help me? I'll get the fever. What have I done?"

Olwen moved to the doorway of the room, her body filling the frame thereof, her scissors hanging at her side.

"You are wrong, sister, to starve me," Lisbeth said. "To starve me. I cannot walk you know. You must not blame me if I change my mind about my money. It was wrong of you."

Olwen did not answer.

"Dear me," Lisbeth cried, "supposing our father in Heaven knew how you treat me. Indeed the vestry shall have my bit. I might be a pig in a pigsty. I'll get the fever. Supposing our father is looking through the window of Heaven at your cruelty to me."

Olwen muttered the burden of her care: "'The wife would pull through if she had plenty of attention. How could she with her about? The two of you killed her. You did. I warned you to give up everything and see to her. But you neglected her.' That's what Charlie will say. Hoo-hoo.

'It's unheard of for a woman to die before childbirth. Serves you right if I have an inquest.'..."

"For shame to keep from me now," said Lisbeth in a voice that was higher than the continued muttering of Olwen. "Have you no regard for the living? The dead is dead. And you made too much of Jennie. You spoiled her...."

On a sudden Olwen ceased, and she strode up to the bed and thrust her scissors into Lisbeth's breast.

II

ACCORDING TO THE PATTERN

On the eve of a Communion Sunday Simon Idiot espied Dull Anna washing her feet in the spume on the sh.o.r.e; he came out of his hiding-place and spoke jestingly to Anna and enticed her into Blind Cave, where he had sport with her. In the ninth year of her child, whom she had called Abel, Anna stretched out her tongue at the schoolmaster and took her son to the man who farmed Deinol.

"Brought have I your scarecrow," she said. "Give you to me the brown pennies that you will pay for him."

From dawn to sunset Abel stood on a hedge, waving his arms, shouting, and mimicking the sound of gunning. Weary of his work he vowed a vow that he would not keep on at it. He walked to Morfa and into his mother's cottage; his mother listened to him, then she took a stick and beat him until he could not rest nor move with ease.

"Break him in like a frisky colt, little man bach,"[1] said Anna to the farmer. "Know you he is the son of Satan. Have I not told how the Bad Man came to me in my sound sleep and was naughty with me?"

[Footnote 1: Dear little man. "Bach" is the Welsh masculine for "dear"; "fach" the Welsh feminine for "dear."]

But the farmer had compa.s.sion on Abel and dealt with him kindly, and when Abel married he let him live in Tybach--the mud-walled, straw-thatched, two-roomed house which is midway on the hill that goes down from Synod Inn into Morfa--and he let him farm six acres of land.

The young man and his bride so labored that the people thereabout were confounded; they stirred earlier and lay down later than any honest folk; and they took more eggs and tubs of b.u.t.ter to market than even Deinol, and their pigs fattened wondrously quick.

Twelve years did they live thus wise. For the woman these were years of toil and child-bearing; after she had borne seven daughters, her sap husked and dried up.

Now the spell of Abel's mourning was one of ill-fortune for Deinol, the master of which was grown careless: hay rotted before it was gathered and corn before it was reaped; potatoes were smitten by a blight, a disease fell upon two cart-horses, and a heifer was drowned in the sea.

Then the farmer felt embittered, and by day and night he drank himself drunk in the inns of Morfa.

Because he wanted Deinol, Abel brightened himself up: he wore whipcord leggings over his short legs, and a preacher's coat over his long trunk, a white and red patterned celluloid collar about his neck, and a bowler hat on the back of his head; and his side-whiskers were trimmed in the shape of a spade. He had joy of many widows and spinsters, to each of whom he said: "There's a grief-livener you are," and all of whom he gave over on hearing of the widow of Drefach. Her he married, and with the money he got with her, and the money he borrowed, he bought Deinol. Soon he was freed from the hands of his lender. He had eight horses and twelve cows, and he had oxen and heifers, and pigs and hens, and he had twenty-five sheep grazing on his moorland. As his birth and poverty had caused him to be scorned, so now his gains caused him to be respected.

The preacher of Capel Dissenters in Morfa saluted him on the tramping road and in shop, and brought him down from the gallery to the Big Seat.

Even if Abel had land, money, and honor, his vessel of contentment was not filled until his wife went into her deathbed and gave him a son.

"Indeed me," he cried, "Benshamin his name shall be. The Large Maker gives and a One He is for taking away."

He composed a prayer of thankfulness and of sorrow; and this prayer he recited to the congregation which gathered at the graveside of the woman from Drefach.

Benshamin grew up in the way of Capel Dissenters. He slept with his father and ate apart from his sisters, for his mien was lofty. At the age of seven he knew every question and answer in the book "Mother's Gift," with sayings from which he scourged sinners; and at the age of eight he delivered from memory the Book of Job at the Seiet; at that age also he was put among the elders in the Sabbath School.

He advanced, waxing great in religion. On the nights of the Saying and Searching of the Word he was with the cunningest men, disputing with the preacher, stressing his arguments with his fingers, and proving his learning with phrases from the sermons of the saintly Shones Talysarn.

If one asked him: "What are you going, Ben Abel Deinol?" he always answered: "The errander of the White Gospel fach."

His father communed with the preacher, who said: "Pity quite sinful if the boy is not in the pulpit."

"Like that do I think as well too," replied Abel. "Eloquent he is. Grand he is spouting prayers at his bed. Weep do I."

Neighbors neglected their fields and barnyards to hear the lad's shoutings to G.o.d. Once Ben opened his eyes and rebuked those who were outside his room.

"Shamed you are, not for certain," he said to them. "Come in, boys Capel. Right you hear the Gospel fach. Youngish am I but old is my courtship of King Jesus who died on the tree for scamps of parsons."

He shut his eyes and sang of blood, wood, white shirts, and thorns; of the throng that would arise from the burial-ground, in which there were more graves than molehills in the shire. He cried against the heathenism of the Church, the wickedness of Church t.i.thes, and against unG.o.dly book-prayers and short sermons.

Early Ben entered College Carmarthen, where his piety--which was an adage--was above that of any student. Of him this was said: "'White Jesus bach is as plain on his lips as the purse of a big bull.'"

Brightness fell upon him. He had a name for the tearfulness and splendor of his eloquence. He could conduct himself fancifully: now he was Pharaoh wincing under the plagues, now he was the Prodigal Son longing to eat at the pigs' trough, now he was the Widow of Nain rejoicing at the recovery of her son, now he was a parson in Nineveh squirming under the prophecy of Jonah; and his hearers winced or longed, rejoiced or squirmed. Congregations sought him to preach in their pulpits, and he chose such as offered the highest reward, pledging the richest men for his wage and the cost of his entertainment and journey. But Ben would rule over no chapel. "I wait for the call from above," he said.

His term at Carmarthen at an end, he came to Deinol. His father met him in a doleful manner.

"An old boy very cruel is the Parson," Abel whined. "Has he not strained Gwen for his t.i.thes? Auction her he did and bought her himself for three pounds and half a pound."

Ben answered: "Go now and say the next Sat.u.r.day Benshamin Lloyd will give mouthings on t.i.thes in Capel Dissenters."

Ben stood in the pulpit, and spoke to the people of Capel Dissenters.

"How many of you have been to his church?" he cried. "Not one male bach or one female fach. Go there the next Sabbath, and the black muless will not say to you: 'Welcome you are, persons Capel. But there's glad am I to see you.' A comic sermon you will hear. A sermon got with half-a-crown postal order. Ask Postman. Laugh highly you will and stamp on the floor. Funny is the Parson in the white frock. Ach y fy, why for he doesn't have a coat preacher like Respecteds? Ask me that. From where does his Church come from? She is the inheritance of Satan. The only thing he had to leave, and he left her to his friends the parsons.

Iss-iss, earnest affair is this. Who gives him his food? We. Who pays for Vicarage? We. Who feeds his pony? We. His cows? We. Who built his church? We. With stones carted from our quarries and mortar messed about with the tears of our mothers and the blood of our fathers."

At the gate of the chapel men discussed Ben's words; and two or three of them stole away and herded Gwen into the corner of the field; and they caught her and cut off her tail, and drove a staple into her udder.

Sunday morning eleven men from Capel Dissenters, with iron bands to their clogs on their feet, and white ap.r.o.ns before their bellies, shouted without the church: "We are come to pray from the book." The Parson was affrighted, and left over tolling his bell, and he bolted and locked the door, against which he set his body as one would set the stub of a tree.

Running at the top of their speed the railers came to Ben, telling how the Parson had put them to shame.

"Iobs you are," Ben answered. "The boy bach who loses the key of his house breaks into his house. Does an old wench bar the dairy to her mishtress?"

The men returned each to his abode, and an hour after midday they gathered in the church burial-ground, and they drew up a tombstone, and with it rammed the door; and they hurled stones at the windows; and in the darkness they built a wall of dung in the room of the door.

Repentance sank into the Parson as he saw and remembered that which had been done to him. He called to him his servant Lissi Workhouse, and her he told to take Gwen to Deinol. The cow lowed woefully as she was driven; she was heard even in Morfa, and many hurried to the road to witness her.

Abel was at the going in of the close.

"Well-well, Lissi Workhouse," he said, "what's doing then?"