Through Welsh Doorways Part 13

The Stranger set his eyes southward up the mountain. After a while he turned to look back at the cottage cradled in the fields below; beyond the valley, Moelwyn, ma.s.sive and green; eastward, Cynicht, sharp and grey; and still farther east, a vast wilderness of crag tumbled hither and thither down to the very edge of the glimmering sea. "Hope goes with me, little one," he said, and turned to climb higher. At the summit he looked westward; there lay a lake blue as a meadow-flower, and half-way down, by the little brook Tom had described, there was a large circle of loose stones.

The Stranger hurried forward. He glanced at the sun, and began by the edge of the circle near the brook, turning up the soggy earth in large clods. He dug feverishly, working hour after hour. He lay down and pulled the earth away in rolls, the wet drenching him, still hoping against hope. He took the clods of earth and dashed them against the rocks where they broke noiselessly. He looked about as if praying that some power might come to him from the blue distance or the sky above or the golden sun; then he sank on the stones and wept. The little green snake that crept by in the gra.s.s, the snail that trailed over the sod, heard him weep, and the cry that came from him, "My little one, my little one, was it for this?"

The afternoon swung its shadows eastward, and the roof of the cottage lay in a pointed figure on the gra.s.s beyond the hedge. Two men bearing something toiled up the path to the hedge gate. As the sun set behind Bryn Bannog the pointed roof-shadow drew in, and the shadow from the hedge lay on the gra.s.s in a dark ribbon, growing narrower and fainter.

From the distant summit a single figure dropped slowly downhill, the autumn dusk closing around it. In the windows candle-light flickered; a woman came to the west door and looked uphill. She seemed troubled and she had been crying.

"Brothers, he is comin'," called Jane, "he is close by the house. Och, be kind to him for the child's sake! It is not too late even now."

"Well, Stranger," said Tom, appearing at the door, "did you find aught?"

"Nay," replied the Stranger, in a level voice. "Is there another ruin where the dream might lie?"

"Dreams!" exclaimed Tom cheerily, "dreams, dreams! 'Tis no place for dreams. You will find nothin' but sheep bones buried on Bryn Bannog. Do you know of any other place, Owen?"

Owen took his pipe from his mouth, looked hard at his brother, hard at the Stranger, started to speak, changed his mind, and put the pipe in his mouth again.

"Will you come in an' rest?" asked Tom. "'Tis growin' dark."

"My way is long, westward over the hills, an' the child is waitin'."

"Here," said Tom, holding out a coin, "here is a crown for the little Flower."

"Nay," replied the Stranger gently, "it would avail nothin'. She hath need of many crowns. Good-night."

As the Stranger took the path downhill, the brothers turned indoors.

Jane confronted them, her eyes indignant, her lips tense.

"You--you will go after him. Och, that I should live to see this day!

The Lord will find you out."

Tom laughed.

"Set the candle on the table," he said; "'tis an odd box. Is the door fast, Owen?"

"Aye, fast."

"To think it's lain in our pastures these hundreds of years."

Tom undid the hasps. He lifted out one chalice of silver after another, and several silver plates, all marked with early dates. Tom looked disappointed; Owen's face had grown pallid. Jane was speaking to them both:--

"'Tis the lost church silver, the altar-service, aye, the holy altar-service; now what will you do?" she cried.

At the breakfast table the porridge was eaten in silence. Jane's eyes were red. Tom looked uneasy, and Owen stared into his dish. In vain Gwennie thrust her little white nose against Owen's leg. "Baa-a!" Still no attention.

"I'm glad the wind is quiet," said Jane.

There was no response.

"Did you sleep, Tom?" she asked.

"Sleep! With that shriekin' of the wind!"

"Nay," said Owen softly, "the cryin' of a little child, indeed."

"There _was_ no gold, I say," Tom a.s.serted.

"True," Owen complied.

"Well, 'twas altar silver, whatever."

"Aye," a.s.sented Jane, "an' it must go back to the church."

"Yes, an' we're no richer," ended Tom. "We've nothin' to spare to a stranger an' his child."

Owen turned the leaves of the big Bible on the table. Tom was staring defiantly from Jane to Owen.

"'It were better a millstone'--" Owen began to read to himself.

"The devil!" shouted Tom, rushing from the table and slamming the door behind him.

Owen went out after him. Their work for that day lay in the sheep-pens by the brook, washing and shearing the sheep. Before him Tom was walking very fast and talking in a loud, angry voice. But Owen was thinking of the sound of the wind as it cried and whimpered and pleaded all night long. And the flowers he saw in the gra.s.s at his feet made him think of big eyes; and the sheen on the gra.s.s, of a child's hair; and the slender birch-wands, of a child's little body. What would it have been like to have had such a little one a part of him? And supposing it had lain crumpled together like yonder fern--Owen's heart gave a great leap.

Tom was still talking when he reached the sheepfold. The anger had left his face, and in its stead there was uneasy inquiry. Owen, without looking at his brother, took his seat on the shearing-stool and the shepherd carried a sheep to him. Owen turned it deftly. Clip, clip, clip, the fleece began to roll back from the shears and the skin to show pink through the stubble of remaining fleece. Clip! a deft turn to right, then to left, and the fleece slipped to the ground and lay there, white, and with arms outstretched.

"Och!" exclaimed Owen, staring at it, "I'm goin' westward to the child, tell Jane."

"I'm goin', too," called Tom, walking after him rapidly, grumbling and talking, "an' I'll not tell Jane. There's no need to go so fast, whatever."

Jane came to the door of the cottage and looked down to the roadway.

Gwennie was beside her and caught sight of Owen. "Baa-a!" the lamb bleated, scampering downhill.

"Gwennie, Gwennie!" called Jane.

But the stiff little legs were taking the hillside in leaps and bounds.

"Gwennie, _bach_, Gwen_nie_, Gwennie bach!"

Jane started downhill after the lamb. "If they're goin'," she said to herself, with a shrewd look of understanding, "indeed, I'm goin' too."

"Baa-a!" bleated Gwennie, with little frisks and skips to right and left.

_An All-Hallows' Honeymoon_