Through Welsh Doorways Part 19

"Indeed, sir, we didn't know."

"Ah well, it's my fault," Evan answered humbly. "For what reasons were you asked to leave?"

"Och, sir, you would not like the truth."

"Aye, Gabriel, but tell it since I ask for it."

"Well, sir, first because we wouldn't be churched."

Evan's eyes winced. "And then?"

"Well, sir, because we wouldn't trade at Mr. Thatcher's shop."

"Trade at Thatcher's shop?" Evan repeated incredulously, anger and humiliation in his tone.

"Aye, sir." Then seeing the mortification upon Sir Evan's face, Gabriel added hastily: "But it's my fault Maggie's out'n her head. I was cruel to her, an' between that an' havin' to leave home it broke her heart."

"No, Gabriel, it's more my fault than yours," said Evan. "May I see her?"

"Aye, sir," a.s.sented Gabriel, taking him into the kitchen.

Maggie raised her head, a bright look of love and welcome upon her face.

"Lad, I heard ye, I thought ye'd come, an' ye've come so far."

"Och, pardon her, sir," said Gabriel, "she thinks it's Eilio. Mam, it's the master, not Eilio."

Evan rested his hand on Maggie's hot forehead. "So," he asked, "you are not well to-day?"

"Aye, tired--but it's nothin' at all, nothin' at all, whatever, except a sorrow here, dearie," and Maggie pointed to her bosom.

"A sorrow, Maggie?"

"Aye, but it's no matter at all now," she answered. "I'll put it by in the creamer with the paper, stuff it in tight like cheese in a sack."

And she laughed merrily.

"That's right," he replied.

"My, ye've grown to a sweet-lookin' lad," she said, patting his hand.

"Could ye--could ye keep a home for mam now? I'll give ye," she whispered, looking at Gabriel furtively, "everythin' I have--that's three pounds. But ye mustn't tell him."

Evan glanced at Gabriel, but the old man did not see him, for he was staring at the floor.

"Lad, could ye?" Maggie demanded again.

"Yes, Maggie," Evan answered, "we will keep a home for you as long as you live. You shall have Isgubor Newydd--see, I will give it to you. You shall have a deed of it."

"There," said Maggie, "of course, tell father now, an'--an' I hope he'll want to stay."

_The Choice_

I

Keturah, leaning towards the open grate of coals in the cheerful kitchen of the Reverend Samson Jones, rubbed up and down, up and down her old shin; so rhythmical was the motion that she might have been sousing or rubbing clothes, except for a polyphonic "Ow! Ow!" to set off the rubbing. Keturah knew better than to quarrel with fate. But when the latch lifted she looked up eagerly, with that instinctive hunger for sympathy upon which most of the satisfaction of joy or the pleasure of pain depends. It was Deb, the widow Morgan's servant, and Keturah groaned afresh with the joyous sense of having from all the world just the audience she would have chosen for her misery.

"Ow, ow!"

"Well, indeed, what is it?" asked Deb, subduing her voice, but unable to dim the two ripe, red cherries in her old red cheeks, or the snap in her old eyes.

"Ow, 'tis a pain--ow! a pain in me leg."

"Och, well, 't is too bad, but 'tis nothin', 'tis nothin'

but the effect of old age," said Deb comfortingly, "an' old age is never comin' alone."

"Not comin' alone?"

"Nay, nay, no more nor youth comes without love, nor middle age without comfort, nor----"

"Tut," interrupted Keturah sharply, "indeed ye are makin' a mistake; the pain has nothin' to do with growin' old. The other leg is quite as old whatever, but that one is well, aye, quite well."

After an awkward silence Deb said lightly, "Is it? well, indeed!" then pa.s.sed with feminine skill to another subject. "Have ye heard the news about Tudur Williams? No? Well, he went quite nasty with Cardo Parry for playin' false with poor little Sally Edwards."

"Did he so! Tudur is always fightin', his pale face looks so fierce."

"Aye, bleached. 'Tis hard rememberin' he an' the schoolmistress are brother and sister."

"Aye, hard, but what did Cardo Parry do?"

The two women lowered their voices, and with that nave liking old age often has for repulsive tales, they rolled this particular story as a sweet morsel under their tongues. Keturah forgot to rub her old shin, and the two women confronted each other in the candle-lighted room with bright eyes in which every skip of the flame from the coals over the shining bra.s.ses was reflected.

"Tudur Williams was right!" exclaimed Keturah.

"Aye, Tudur Williams is always right; but do you believe in it?"

"Aye, aye, I do indeed."

"Tut, Keturah, believe that? I cannot. Ye're that trustin', ye'd believe the whale swallowed Jonah, indeed."

"Aye, so I do," fervently affirmed Keturah; "that blessed story I heard from the master's father first, and I've heard it often from the master himself. 'Tis true as the Lord's Prayer."

"Pooh!" sniffed Deb, with the superiority of one indulging in the higher criticism; "if the Bible said Jonah swallowed the whale ye'd believe that, too!"

"Aye, aye, indeed, iss, iss, if the Bible said so," admitted Keturah simply; "but the Bible don't."

"Well," Deb hastened to add, with a sense of having been on tottering exegetical foundations, "I dunno. But if I was to say the pastor would marry my mistress, would ye believe that, now would ye?"