Through Welsh Doorways Part 6

And with a flounce Catrin Griffiths betook herself out of the shop.

Pedr with his back to the counter was the same as Pedr with his face to the shop-door; however, he did not seem the same. The back suggested middle age, but the face was the face of a boy in its expression, with something perennially young about it: it may have been innocence or untouched pride or something that looked from his eyes as if they had been those of a mere girl. Indeed, except for a conscious awkwardness of hand and a certain steadfast, almost impa.s.sive look about the mouth, he might have recited an _awdl_ or been a bard. Howbeit, he could neither play a harp nor recite an ode. And because he kept only a stationer's shop, which contained a fine medley of inferior post-cards scattered everywhere, piles of newspapers, books, shelves of letter-paper, trinkets of rustic and plebeian sort, it would not be safe to conclude that he was no more than a thoroughly commonplace man. Because he spent his leisure from the shop in taking pictures of the country he loved, it would not be wise to decide that he was therefore a poor, mediocre thing who had not brains enough to make even a very wretched artist; who was, in short, a mere factotum to higher ability.

Pedr's shop, which lay on a steep winding cobblestone street next to the Cambrian Pill Depot, five doors down from Plas Mawr and twenty doors up from the Castle Gate, was tenanted by dreams as fair and holy in service, although they never found their way into the world except by means of sensitised paper or by an occasional expression in Pedr's eye or tremble of his impa.s.sive lips--this shop was tenanted by dreams as fair as any which had ever waited upon accepted painter or poet. They had a habit of tiptoeing about unseen, so that the usual customer who entered Pedr's door would not have felt their presence. Nelw Parry had come to know them well, but before Catrin Griffiths they vanished away.

The lovely colour of dawn itself was not gobbled up faster by the smoke of trade than these ent.i.ties disappeared at the sound of Catrin Griffiths' heels upon the street. In fact the tiny beings were troubled by the presence of even post-cards, for, dream-like, they wished to give all they had, if need be, to the hearts which could be seen beating through the hands that held them, and these cards lying upon the floor, these flaunting things of many colours, were commerce; things, they thought, which were to steal something from men. Over the counter, from which a few minutes ago he had recoiled, Pedr Evans had often leaned, many invisible eyes smiling upon him, taking from some old folio pictures which had caught the very l.u.s.tre of the sky; or the mingled shadow and iridescence of a hillside, mysteriously suggestive of the sea; or some flow and subsidence of light itself. Like any other mortal, poor Pedr had to live, and that is why he was obliged to keep a shop next to the Cambrian Pill Depot. If he had been an artist, the world might willingly have forgotten that he had to live at all and paid him just nothing for his work. But it was not the necessity of existence which made him lean upon the counter, showing a picture another man never would have had the wit to take. To Pedr something beautiful was always worth a plate, so he had many pictures no one bought, and he was not often given a chance to show.

Later in the day, after his encounter with Catrin Griffiths, Pedr was with Nelw Parry in the sitting-room of the Raven Temperance, drinking tea. Nelw's house, from the outside, was a quaint, stuccoed building with a quant.i.ty of chimney-pots sticking up into the sky, neat steps and a bra.s.s sill at the front door, a painted sign "Raven Temperance," and printed cards at the windows, one bearing a cyclist's wheel decorated with mercurial wings, the other the gratifying word, "Refreshments."

Within the room were two people, both middle-aged, drinking tea--a commonplace enough scene the casual observer would have said; however, at that moment these two people, even if they were doing nothing more romantic than talking quietly together, lifting their teacups once in a while and looking at each other a good deal, were very much like good children in a fairy tale. It may have been merely a trick of the light due to the low cas.e.m.e.nt windows, that the room seemed more peaceful than most rooms in Conway; the subdued light touched the soft green walls gently, reaching for the top of the walls as if it were some enchanted region, to enter which it must climb. Indeed, it was an enchanted region, for there a shining silver river ran in and out, in and out, among alleys of green trees. In and out, in and out, it ran noiselessly, and yet it seemed to Pedr, as to some strangers who entered the little room for refreshments, to sing a song heard before--just when, just how, was another question. Some visitors who had been in that room once came again to sit, often bodily weary, while their eyes travelled to that border of the shining river, and the mistress of the "Raven" waited upon them tranquilly, placing the tea-service before them, and, it may be, adjusting a wrap about a stranger's shoulders as delicately as if she were adding to the comfort of some happy fancy, some ideal, some dream, that a burdened touch might shatter. Grateful, there were tired travellers glad to come and go phantom-like, putting down their silver gently, in a room where reality seemed the greatest phantom of all.

To Pedr it was better than the best picture he had ever taken--better than the best because the thought of taking it would have seemed like desecration. He looked at Nelw, as he did every few seconds, alternately, over his teacup and then without that barrier to his gaze.

Coils of dark hair made the shapely head heavy on the slender neck, as if the weight of that abundant beauty were great. It was wonderful hair, making in its shadowy depth a shade for the white, sensitive face, quiet as the reverie of her eyes. In a land where comely hair blessed poor and rich alike with its wealth, Nelw Parry's was even lovelier than that of her neighbours. It had one peculiarity, however, which her neighbours did not admire but which to Pedr--perhaps to something untutored in Pedr--was dear. Around the edges of its abundance little curls escaped.

"Nelw," he said, glancing at her wistfully, "they're prettier than ever."

She brushed the curls back and looked at him with reproach, as if something she was thinking about, or something of which they had been talking, had been rudely disturbed. As an actual matter of fact they had been saying nothing for two or three minutes, indulging the speechlessness of those who know their way even by day to another land.

But Pedr was aware what sort of answer any remark about Nelw's hair always fetched, so he changed the subject.

"Dearie, Catrin Griffiths was in the shop this mornin'."

"What was she wantin'?"

"I dunno; she bought sixpence worth of writin' paper," replied Pedr, regarding Nelw with the air of a man who would like to say more. He was wondering how much she guessed of Catrin's angling.

A shadow of annoyance pa.s.sed over Nelw's face.

"Dearie," he continued, encouraged by her expression, "I can't like her, whatever; she's--she's not nice."

"Well, indeed, she's smart," answered Nelw gently.

"Tut! smart in those things she wears? She looks more than frowsy to me; an'--an' she's always coming into my shop."

"Poor thing!" murmured Nelw, her face tender with pity.

Pedr observed her wonderingly. What prompted this compa.s.sion in Nelw?

What made her understand weakness without being disgusted or repelled by its ugliness? Other women were not like her in this respect. And just behind this yielding lovableness that yearned over the mistakes of others, that reached out to Pedr as one athirst for the necessity of life, that clung to Pedr for strength, for protection, like a child afraid of the dark, what was this sense he had, of an obstinate reticence which seemed the very resiliency of her mysterious nature?

Certainly she had had a bitter life. Then, like a viper into its nest, what Catrin Griffiths had said darted into Pedr's mind. Was there something he did not know, that he ought to know? With the acuteness of the man who can detect the shadow of even a folded leaf, he searched Nelw's face. Why when she needed him, when she was alone, when she was fretted by the difficulties of her solitary life, why did she always put off their marriage? Baffled, irritated, he spoke sharply.

"Poor thing, nothin'! It's a pound head an' a ha'penny tail with Catrin Griffiths."

Nelw gasped.

"A pound head an' a ha'penny tail, I say," he continued roughly, "Aye, an' the time is comin', comin' soon, when she'll get herself into trouble, flauntin' around with those frocks on, all decked out, an' all her false seemin', her face painted and powdered, an' her hair dyed. The deceitful thing!"

"Och, Pedr, don't!"

But Pedr, excited beyond self-control by the workings of his imagination, could not stop. The blanching face before him was no more than a cipher, it expressed nothing to him.

"Tut! that I will. An' what is it Catrin Griffiths knows an' I don't?

Yes?"

There was a cry of "Pedr!" Nelw shivered, her eyes widened and stared at him. It was so still in that room that the flutter of the draught sucking the smoke up the chimney could be heard. Pedr sat motionless in his chair, the reality of what he had done yet to reach him. Nelw moved, and in an instant he was beside her.

"Dearie, dearie, what have I done?"

"Och, nothin'--nothin' at all," she answered, her face twitching helplessly.

"But I did; och, I was beside myself; I didn't know what I was sayin'!"

Pedr paused, he looked at her longingly: "Nelw, little lamb, is it _somethin'_ I ought to know?"

"It's nothin', nothin' at all," she replied, her eyes still staring at him, her hands lying open upon her lap, palms up. And there she sat and sighed and sighed, refusing to answer any of Pedr's questions; and, every once in a while, moaning, "Not him, dear G.o.d, och! not him!"

At dusk every day, and every day in the year except Sunday, and year after year, the servant had brought the lights into Pedr Evans's stationery shop, and, setting them down, had gone back into the kitchen.

This evening, as she went into the room, scarcely knowing whether her master was in or not, everything had been so noiseless, she started, for there he sat, his head in his hands. Except for a slight disturbance when Pedr entered his shop, which it is probable no other human ear would have heard, there had not been a sound, until Betsan came in.

Nelw's "Nothin', nothin' at all" had been going around and around in his mind like a turn-buckle tightening up his thoughts, till it seemed to him they would snap. Then it would be, "What has she done? what has she done?" He had known her, in her sensitiveness, to exaggerate; she had confided to him some of the incidents of her childhood, which would have been taken quietly enough by other children. But he was unable to reason away the horror that looked out from her face to-day. And he, Pedr Evans, had asked the question that had brought that expression! A question suggested by a woman of whom even to think in the same moment was to dishonour Nelw. He wondered what it was that crawled into a man's mind and made him to do a thing like that?

Betsan had barely closed the door into the kitchen, when, like the vision of the woman who tempted St. Anthony, Catrin Griffiths stood before him, the shrewd ogling eyes looking at him out of the painted face. The question, the answer to which was of more concern to him than anything else on earth, surged back upon him and stifled him and beat in his temples and his ears till it seemed as if he could not breathe.

Catrin coughed.

"Um-m, Pedr Evans, I forgot the envelopes this mornin'."

"Well, indeed," he replied mechanically.

"Aye," she affirmed. Then asked, "Did ye see Nelw Parry this afternoon?"

knowing that he had done so, for her room was opposite the Raven.

"Yes," he said.

"What was she tellin' you, eh, what? She's not so unlike me, yes?"

Pedr looked at her, his mind at a bow-and-string tension of expectancy.

"She didn't tell you, I see," Catrin continued. "Well, may every one pity the poor creature! You'll be wantin' to know so----"

But Catrin Griffiths never got any further, for with a leap Pedr was upon her.

"Out of my shop, girl, out!" and she was bundled through the door and the door slammed behind her and locked.

Pedr's feeling of pa.s.sionate anger against himself as well as against Catrin gradually settled. He must try to think. He would see no one else to-night and turned out the lamps. For a minute the wicks flickered, puffing odd jets of shadow on the raftered ceiling. There was an instant of wavering flame, then darkness, and only the silvered window-panes looking into the obscure room like big shining eyes. Pedr sat still, thinking, sighing and sighing. There were vague rustling noises in the shop; every time he sighed it seemed as if the noises quivered together like dry leaves. What would it ever matter to him now what happened?

Without warning he had been robbed of his happiness; even time never could have proved such a thief, for time was no common plunderer,--if it took away, often it put something far more precious in its place. Pedr had always liked to think what time meant to anything lastingly beautiful; he loved the houses better when they were old, the thought that they had been attractive to others, had held many joys and even sorrows, made them beautiful to him; he liked the lines in an old face, somehow they made it merrier, made it sweeter; even the yellowing of a photograph, for Pedr was limited in his subjects from which to draw ill.u.s.trations, pleased him with some added softening of tone. Life with Nelw, as it wound towards the end of the road, would be, he had thought, ever more and more enchanting, for just where the road dipped over into s.p.a.ce there was the sky. Even Death confirmed love. That last blessing it had to give--the greatest blessing of all. But now his mind must be forever like the track of the snail in the dust. It was no matter to him now what lay upon the hillsides or within the valleys; the heavy-domed shadows of foliage trees, the shadow of ripple upon ripple where the water wrinkles, were alike of little account. He sighed again, and there was the same succession of small sounds, for he was not alone in the room. Hidden away in all the corners and nooks of the darkened shop were scores of little beings, once his comrades. Now they hid and trembled in their dark places, shrinking from Pedr from whom it had been their wont to take what the all-powerful hand offered. They well knew what tragedy might be coming to them, for of their race more had died in one age than of the race of man in all ages. But like the children of men, till the moment of danger they had counted themselves secure, and now when Pedr sighed it was as if the sea went over them. They had always been so well off; but they had seen the fate of their kin, the wide reachless waters that had unexpectedly surrounded them, the boiling of the waves, the calm, and the bodies floating on the surface, their wee diaphanous hands empty of the hearts that had once beat through them, their faces looking with closed eyes up into the everlasting day. As Pedr sighed again and again, they shook now, their hands over their ears, in the dusty holes of the shop. At last Pedr sighed a mighty sigh, and it was like the shaking of the wind in a great tree. Although it was a mighty sigh, the little beings uncovered their ears, and, with a new expression on their faces, leaned forward to hear it repeated. It came once more. Then they crept softly out of their nooks and small recesses and dusty corners, and stood tiptoe waiting for the next sigh. It came, and the wind seemed to shake down lightly through the great tree with the most dulcet notes in all the world; whisperings and tremolos and flutings and pipings. At that, the little beings ran from every part of the shop, and Pedr heard them coming; they clambered about his knees, they climbed into his lap, and Pedr gathered them all into his arms--that is as many as he could hold, and the rest seemed happy enough without being there.

If the truth must be told, Pedr slept soundly that night, just like the most fortunate of lovers. And the next morning, after he had found fault with his breakfast and scolded Betsan for her late rising, he betook himself, with a far more cheerful heart than he had known in many hours, to Nelw's. Pedr in the darkened shop had learned a lesson which he would not have exchanged for any pure unmixed joy upon earth. And he knew even now, with the sun upon him and a strange yearning within him, that it mattered very little what Nelw had done or was hiding from him, for despite every dreadful possibility he loved her with a feeling that mastered fear.

When Nelw opened the door for him she shrank away.

"Och, Pedr," she said, "so early!"

"Well, indeed, _so_ early," he replied, with an attempt at gaiety.