The Making of William Edwards Part 13

'I'm not afraid of stones, sir. I've got a heap, and I build with them.

But Rhys kicks them over and says I waste my time.'

'So you build with stones, do you? And, pray, what do you build?' asked the gentleman, with a comical smile, unseen in the twilight. 'Do you think you could build a bridge over this treacherous river? You would do good service if you could,' he added, _sotto voce_.

William felt abashed. He had an uncomfortable suspicion he was being laughed at.

'I am only a boy, sir. I can only _try_ to build. But when I am a man, Rhys shall see!'

'And who is Rhys?' put the other, resuming his walk when he found the boy did not turn towards the cottage by the ford.

'Rhys is my big brother. But, if you please, sir, what do be a _bridge?_'

Without evincing any surprise at the ignorance of a boy of his cla.s.s and age, who could not have travelled far from home, the other answered promptly, 'A bridge is a roadway built _over_ a river so that people may walk or ride across without wetting their feet. Bridges are sometimes built of wood, sometimes of stone or brick. A bridge is sadly wanted hereabouts, my boy. I narrowly escaped being swept away at the ford this morning.'

William drew in his breath. 'Oh-h-h! Would a bridge have saved my father from being drowned?'

'It would preserve any one who had occasion to cross.'

'Then I'll build one when I'm a man, 'deed I will,' came promptly.

The stranger, amused by William's earnestness, put some few questions, in his turn, respecting his father's death, his name, and occupation, ascertained whence arose his peculiar fancy for building, and suggested that if the church had attracted him so much he should contrive to visit the ruins of Caerphilly Castle, which he would find much more wonderful as a building; adding that he would have to cross a drawbridge to get into the castle.

'Why, mother and Rhys go to Caerphilly market every week. They never told me of the wonderful castle, whatever! But I'll go myself,' cried William, his imagination fired, and his indignation rising under the supposition that he had been kept wilfully in the dark. It did not occur to him that familiarity had taken the wonder out of the ancient pile for his elders.

They had reached the foot of the steep ascent to the farm, which William pointed out with some pride as his home, and there the stranger--who said he was on his way to the vicarage--took leave of him, saying that his name was Morris, and perhaps they might meet again some day, for he was interested in stone, but it was ironstone and not for building. However, before he went, he gave the boy a word or two of advice.

'Remember,' said he, 'you have a character to build before you think of building houses and churches, and a _boy_ may begin to build that.'

'How?' was asked, William's grey eyes opening wide.

'By fearing G.o.d, and doing his duty. But there are bad characters as well as good ones, and every act of disobedience, of untruthfulness, of indolence, goes to build up the evil in place of the good.'

He had left William something to ponder. That was a memorable encounter.

CHAPTER XII.

CAERPHILLY CASTLE.

A country vicar in the last century bore little or no resemblance to a clergyman of any status in this. He was a much more homely and patriarchal character, especially among the Welsh mountains.

Whatever his learning or his eloquence, he did not hesitate to till his own glebe-lands, or to perform offices from which the pastor of to-day would shrink as derogatory to his cloth. As a rule, his stipend was small, and necessity compelled him so to labour. He came, however, nearer to his flock in consequence.

When Mrs. Edwards, the Sunday following William's escapade, besought the Rev. John Smith to admonish her refractory son, who perversely and sullenly refused obedience to his eldest brother, idling and playing with stones when he should be at work on the farm, and wandering no one knew whither when reproved, she was surprised to hear him say--

'Um, ah, yes, I wanted to have a word with that boy of yours. But which am I to admonish, the eldest, who should set an example of brotherly love and consideration, or the youngest, who resents what he regards as petty persecution and overbearing a.s.sumption?'

"Deed, sir, Rhys has only set a good example to the rest. He do work hard upon the farm all day, and teach them to read at night; and he do have a right to expect them to look up to him, and do what he tells them; for you see, sir, he do be grown quite a young man, and a good farmer too, look you.'

'Um, ah, yes, yes. I see. I understand all about it, Mrs. Edwards,' was the vicar's running comment; 'I'll admonish the offender,' the twinkle in his genial blue eyes, as he turned to accost another parishioner, puzzling her greatly.

However, as there was peace between the brothers for a considerable time, the widow congratulated herself on bespeaking the good vicar's interference.

She was not aware, for Rhys did not think proper to say, that, after asking him confidentially if the gossip he had heard about himself and William was true, and what were the rights of the case, the vicar, out of his own mouth, had convicted him of a want of brotherly kindness and forbearance, and had 'admonished' him to remember what a lazy lad _he_ had been prior to his father's death, and had asked how he would have liked an elder brother to come hectoring over him in those days? In short, he read Rhys an informal homily on arrogant a.s.sumption, and the need to exercise a degree of lenity towards a brother so much younger, who was in all probability no worse than he had been himself. It was something like a pinp.r.i.c.k to an inflated balloon.

Rhys did not hold his head quite so high as usual when he joined Cate and her father at the churchyard stile; and was so quiet during the walk homeward that Cate tossed her hat-crowned red head about in offended pettishness, and Owen looked at him askance, wondering what the good vicar had said to take all the brightness out of him.

William was no less reticent. But, child though he was, he lived in a dream-world of his own, and had ceased to reveal his inner self on the domestic hearth, scared by the loud laughter and mockery that greeted his curious inquiries and precocious remarks.

In his silence, therefore, there was nothing to surprise his mother, who had fallen in with the general opinion that he was sullen. She had seen the vicar lead him aside, and took the reprimand for granted.

The opening words of his conversation with the nine years boy did not seem much like a reprimand.

'So, William, I hear you are going to be a great builder? And Mr. Morris tells me you want to know all about the Tower of Babel and Solomon's Temple, the Druidical temples, and St. Helen's Church here, with bridges and I do not know what beside. Now which of all these are we to talk about first?'

He had unlocked the boy's heart as with a magic key. Here was some one else who did not laugh at him. Their conversation lasted little over a quarter of an hour, and William was frequently the catechist, but it broke off like a serial story, 'to be continued.' And though it had been chiefly about building and builders, the vicar had not let the boy go away without a few words of gentle advice on his duty to himself and others--a lesson referred back to the two tablets of stone delivered to Moses amid the fiery terrors of Sinai.

After that there was generally a Sunday morning chat in the churchyard, and on one occasion the vicar took the boy home with him to dinner, a distinction that puzzled Mrs. Edwards exceedingly, and made Rhys no less jealous.

The vicar, a small man surmounted by a big clerical wig, had simply shown the boy a few architectural pictures in ill.u.s.trated books, with a brief description of his own, the letterpress being English, and the boy's education stopping short at Welsh.

There was a water-colour drawing upon the parlour wall of a ruined castle with a tower that had been rent from battlement to base, and appeared in the act of falling. It was too remarkable to escape William's observation. He eyed it intently for some minutes. At length he asked, 'What place is that, sir?'

'That? Oh, that is Caerphilly Castle, the oldest fortress in Cambria. Do you not know it?'

'No, but I mean to go there when the tailor comes to make me some proper clothes. The packman let me have the cloth for the stockings I have knitted, look you.'

'Um, ah. So you are in a hurry to discard the ancient Cymric kilt are you?'

'They make one look so like a girl,' was William's shamefaced answer.

'Yet there are grown men both in Wales and in Scotland who still cling to the kilt, and are proud of it. You will be for casting off the old Saxon smock-frock next.'

"Deed no, sir. Men wear smock-frocks, women don't. Rhys wears one and Evan too.'

But, ancient or modern, no sooner had William a chance of an exchange for a short-tailed coat and a pair of knee-breeches than he felt he had made a step towards manhood, much as Davy had done before him--Davy, who went plodding along from day to day and from week to week, with scarcely a thought that did not centre in the farm, and who never troubled himself about 'whys' or 'wherefores.'

'William is not at church to-day. How is that?' remarked the vicar to Mrs. Edwards on the Whitsunday, as he took his customary stroll among his parishioners in all the importance of his wig and three-cornered hat, noting each newly flower-decked grave as he went, and perhaps making a kindly remark in pa.s.sing.

"Deed, sir, I thought he would be here. He was dressed before any of us. Ales said he was proud as a peony of his new clothes, and had gone off first to show himself. He do be a strange boy.'

'Did Rhys say anything to him about them?'

'Yes, sure, he told him that now he was being dressed like a man he hoped he would cease to be playing with stones like a baby.'

'Um, ah, yes, yes. I thought as much. You need not be alarmed if William is not home until late. I can partly guess where he has gone. He is not doing any harm, my good friend. He is in much less danger than Rhys, I can a.s.sure you.'