The Making of William Edwards; or, The Story of the Bridge of Beauty. George David Banks

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СКАЧАТЬ and the swart digger of tin and iron hailed each other by the way, and the widow had many a respectful salutation as they jogged along, and answered many an inquiry about the boy behind her.

      Her first business when they reached Caerphilly was to get over her ordeal with Mr. Pryse, Griffith kindly taking charge of her horse and commodities.

      The narrow entrance to the inn was crowded with tenants on their way to the important deputy's room or from it, but all were ready with natural politeness to make way for William Edwards' widow. Mr. Pryse might have taken a lesson from men of lesser degree.

      From the table by the window where he sat, with an inkhorn and papers before him, small piles of coin at his right hand, he looked up.

      Rhys had taken off his hat; the steward, to assert his superiority, kept his upon his head.

      'So I hear you're a widow, Mrs. Edwards,' was his abrupt salutation. 'The farmer could not see his way home, I'm told, and so got drowned. Blind drunk, I suppose?' A supercilious lift of his narrow shoulders emphasised his brutal comment.

      Rhys flamed up. 'No, sir; my father never got drunk. He could not see for the mist, and the flood carried him away. If he had been drunk, sir, he could not have crossed the Rhonda ford.'

      If Mrs. Edwards had been shocked by the steward's unfeeling rudeness, now she feared her farm was in peril, and began to wish she had left Rhys outside.

      With half-shut eyes, Mr. Pryse scanned the impetuous boy from head to foot curiously. Ignoring the warm defence of a dead father, he drew his sinister brows together, and asked curtly —

      'That your son?'

      ''Deed, yes, sir.'

      'How old is he?'

      'Twelve last March, sir.'

      An unpleasant smile thinned the thin lips that asked again —

      'Your eldest?'

      'Yes, sir.'

      'Humph! And do you expect to manage the farm with only his help?'

      'Not altogether, sir. I've' —

      'What?' he interrupted. 'Come to give it up?'

      'No,' said the widow firmly. 'I have come to pay the rent. I can hire a man. But I shall be the farmer, please God.'

      She counted out the money on the table as she spoke, the fire in her eyes burning up the tears.

      'And what sort of a farmer will you make?' he replied with a sneer. 'You'd better give up the holding at once.'

      'You'd better wait and see, sir. When I cannot pay the rent I may give in, not before. I am wanting the receipt, look you.'

      'Humph! Oh, ah, the receipt, sure!'

      Had he counted on her being so ignorant, or simple, or careless as to pay rent and take no receipt, his quill pen went squeaking over the paper so reluctantly? At all events he watched her narrowly through his slits of eyes as she took it up and read it carefully over, before she folded it up and stowed it away in her needle-book for safe carriage in her capacious pocket.

      He was not quite so confident of her incapacity for management when she left with a brief 'Good-morning,' and was followed by her son, who put on his hat and said never a word. He was wise, for if he had said anything there would have been unpleasantness.

      So there would have been had he heard the growl that followed them. 'Humph! the young cub's as hot and unmannerly as his pig-headed lout of a father! but he'll get his nails cut when the widow marries again, indeed will he.'

      'Mother, does Mr. Pryse ever cheat any one? I don't think he wanted you to have that receipt you had to be asking for,' whispered Rhys when they got outside. 'I felt as if I'd like to knock him down, 'deed I did.'

      'Hush, Rhys,' and the widow looked round, afraid of listeners; 'you must not say that. He's a very hard man, and nobody does be liking him much, but I never heard of his really cheating any one. You must be very careful not to offend him. Your poor father did it once, and he has owed us a grudge ever since.'

      'Then he is a bad man, and I shall hate him for the wicked words he said of father.'

      Owen Griffith was waiting, and brief was the widow's opportunity to impress on Rhys the sin and danger of fostering hatred. As brief was the influence on him. Mr. Pryse, apart from the insult to his father's memory, had touched the sensitive nerve of his own sprouting self-sufficiency, and shown, so the boy thought, a tendency to overreach his mother; and, without any analysis of his own motives, Rhys had conceived on the spot an unconquerable aversion to the unprepossessing steward.

      When Owen Griffith's turn came, Mr. Pryse was, for him, unusually bland and gracious, much interested in his small holding and the welfare of his family, and incidentally interested in his near neighbours, the family so suddenly deprived of its head. But though he passed the weaving farmer through a very fine sieve, he got nothing for his pains that could be laid up against either the drowned man or the capable widow.

      So capable, that she had disposed of her wool, her butter and eggs, sold a quantity of oats from a sample, hired a trustworthy young man named Evan Evans for the farm, made her own purchases, called to see the rheumatic mother of Ales, who lived in a small cot built within the very ruins of the castle, exchanged messages and Christian sympathy with the old dame, and was refreshed and ready for her return home with Rhys long before Owen or his friends thought of stirring.

      And home they got whilst there was light to pick their way, though clouds had been gathering in the south-west, and the first drops of a heavy downpour caught them as they neared the farm. They were welcomed by the joyous shouts of the little ones, and the assurance of Ales that they had all of them been 'as good as gold,' and well deserved the gingerbread brought home for them. Even William, of whom there had been some doubts, accepted the 'going to market' as a common occurrence, and had given her very little trouble, though he had exacted a promise that she would take him some day to see 'the great big house, with the big chimney, that they called the church.'

      CHAPTER V.

      THE NEW INMATE

      The rain was still coming down with steady persistence when, two hours later, Evan Evans lifted the great wooden latch of Brookside Farm, and entered the large kitchen with a 'God save you' for greeting.

      Ales, who was giving the last stir to something bubbling in an iron pot on the fire, whence came a steaming savour of leeks, turned round sharply to see what sort of a young fellow had come into the house as an inmate, and seeing, returned his salutation, as did the two lads waiting for their supper.

      What she saw was a strong-limbed young man, about three or four and twenty, with a good-humoured smile upon his face, as if a drenched coat and muddy nether garments were quite minor discomforts. He carried a lighted lanthorn in one hand, and a bundle slung on a stick over his shoulder.

      'If you're Evan Evans,' said she, 'you'd best take off your coat, and sit down by the fire to get dry,' a corresponding smile on her face sufficing for a welcome, and indicating her content with the sample as presented.

      As if to ensure her good graces, his first act was to step across the floor, and with one strong brown hand lift from the chimney-hook the heavy broth-pot, on the handle of which the girl had just laid both of hers.

      'Good СКАЧАТЬ