Testimonies: A Novel Page 3

  “His wife was a big help to him. She was very pretty when she was young; she came from the same part of the country as he did, but I had not known her before she came to our valley.

  “They said she was not very great as a housekeeper: however that may be, she was a great help to him. I have seen her early and late, working before the light and after it.

  “They did not have a good year until Emyr was born. He was their only child that lived. You would have thought no one had ever had a child before, they were so pleased with him. Things began to go a little better for them after that; not well, but a little better, so they could wind the year round.

  “Armin Vaughan worked even harder, with a son to work for. He was a good boy, Emyr; I was fond of him from the start. He came to me at school, of course, and from the beginning he was a good pupil—he was good at Sunday school too, like his father. He was a great improver: I mean he took his lessons with intelligence—I could tell him the principle of things when other boys could only learn examples by rote. There were some boys I liked more although they were not so good, rougher boys like Moses Gwyn and poor John Davies Tŷ-bach, but I was proud of Emyr when the inspector came. Emyr liked me too, and I can give a proof of it: it is a very hard thing to break a boy of the vices that may come on him, and I do not know how it can be done at all unless there is affection on both sides and good spirit in the boy. By break I do not mean just driving the trouble out of sight. Often with my boys I did no more than that, I know, but with Emyr I was more successful. Twice I had to talk to him; once it was about cruelty to a captured bird (it surprised me in him, so tender usually) and once it was about some habits—it is difficult to explain, but they might have grown very unpleasant and dangerous if they had not been corrected before they grew strong and established. I mention this because it shows the confidence between us: he turned from the beginning of this bad way and I never saw any backsliding.

  “He was serious as a young fellow; no larking about down to Llan or going with the factory girls at Dinas—indeed I thought that perhaps he was not the marrying kind. The same thought came to his father and mother, and it grieved them; for of course they wanted grandchildren.

  “He did marry, however, and at the beginning I was almost sorry when I heard he was keeping company because he had had the idea of following the Institute’s agricultural courses, and now it would be all out of his head.

  “His young lady was not from our valley; she lived over in Cwm Priddlyd, behind Llanfihangel. It would be a good thing for Emyr, everybody said, because her father owned the farm of Cwm Priddlyd, and even if her brother Meurig married, Bronwen would still have an interest in it. Armin Vaughan was all for it, and so was old Mrs. Vaughan. They both wanted the very best for Emyr (it was a pity for him they loved him quite so much, I thought) and Armin Vaughan’s father had worked at Cwm Priddlyd, so they knew everything about the land there—a small farm; but very good, and with fine buildings. And Bronwen was the only girl Emyr had ever looked at, so they wanted to close it quickly. Then Bronwen was very well brought up and a good worker: she was Church, like her mother, but thinking of the farm and of Emyr they did not mind that. Most of all they wanted grandchildren, soon.

  “It was not my place to say anything against it, in any sort of way, and when they asked me about him I gave him the best character I have ever given a young man.

  “Well, they were married and he brought her home to Cwm Bugail. I was going down to stay with my cousin William Edwards at Swansea, so I only saw her arrive and then I was away. By the time I was back she was quite established. I had taken away what you might call a neutral impression: everybody was happy, there was singing and laughing, and Bronwen was very pretty, but still I was not altogether pleased with the marriage, and I never have approved of living two generations together. And there was something about the girl—she was not our sort. I do not know how I decided it, or what I disliked about her, but there it was.

  “When I came back they told me in the village that Bronwen Vaughan, Gelli, was proud. I do not know how she had made herself unpopular; she was always pleasant to the women who went there as far as I could learn, but unpopular she was with most of the village people. Her not coming to chapel had something to do with it, no doubt, and I think there was something in what I shall try to explain. The Vaughans were doing quite well now and some other people were not; Emyr had much better luck as a farmer than his father, and he had a better head. There was a certain amount of jealousy because of that, and people not liking to say anything against Emyr or Armin Vaughan said it, or felt it, against Bronwen.

  “In a little while too I heard many other unfavorable things: I do not remember them in detail, but the sum was that Bronwen had brought too many fine things with her, and she was too high to talk in the shop at Pentref, and she was not as kind as she should be to the old people. I do not know how much there was to all this at that time, and I must say that whenever I saw Mrs. Emyr she was always polite to me in her way, and whenever I went there she made me welcome.

  “People grew more used to her in time, and liked her more I believe: at least I did not hear the remarks that had been so frequent. The women took to her more when she had her baby, and then, when she was more tied, I suppose, she left off going all the way down to the church and came to our chapel sometimes, which brought her more into the ordinary life of the valley. But then again, as the boy began to grow she offended people once more by wanting to bring him up in her own fashion. She had strong ideas. People said they were fancy. They may have been very well, for all I know, but they were not her mother-in-law’s ideas, nor the ideas of our valley.

  “Nothing that was ever said against her came from the old people. Nobody heard Emyr’s mother say a word until the beginning of the disagreement about the child, and even then it was only a very little to a close friend.

  “Emyr, as far as I could see, was quite happy. He was working very hard on the farm now that his father was older, and I saw less of him than I used to, by far, so I cannot speak very well of that time.

  “Another reason that comes to my mind for her unpopularity at the beginning was her sister-in-law Meurig’s wife. They had no children, and they were well-off for mountain farmers, with no rent to pay and the good land they had. She was a little, sharp, black sparking woman, fond of dress: her voice, a high, loud soprano, had been trained when she was young (she was rather older than Meurig, and quite fifteen years older than Bronwen) and in chapel she sang half a note in front of the other women. She had lived with her parents in Liverpool, and although she spoke perfectly good Welsh (an ugly South Caernarvon accent she had) she pretended not to know a word every now and then, and used an English one instead. She had a way of looking round when she got into a house, looking sharply at the furniture and other things; and at Mary Owen’s she dusted her seat before she sat down. Anyone could see that she and Bronwen did not like one another, but there were many people who blamed the family, and Bronwen as one of them.”

  “I see,” said the other. “Thank you very much; now I have a clearer picture of the background. This brings us up to the time with which I am principally concerned. I should be glad if you would tell me about the cottage you have mentioned, and Mr. Pugh, who took it.”

  “Hafod, the cottage, is on the quarry road, above Gelli. It is only a very small, old-fashioned place, but summer visitors liked it and took it almost every year. Mr. Pugh took it at the end of one summer. I heard that he was an English gentleman from Oxford; I did not learn exactly what he did there, but I understood he was a tutor at the university. At that time I did not see him, except in the village, but I heard all about him.

  “I was surprised to hear that he had taken it permanently the next year and that he was going to live there all the time, winter and summer.”

  “Why were you surprised?”

  “He seemed too young to retire, and anyhow, it was only a summer place for his sort. It seemed a queer thing for a man to do. I tho
ught perhaps there was something funny about him, but Armin Vaughan said he thought he was a good man. That was at the beginning.

  “I met him there one evening—at Gelli, I mean—and we had some talk. I invited him to my house, and I went to his; but I am afraid I was not grand enough for him, and I did not see very much of him. I thought he was quite a respectable gentleman, but I did not like his airs. I know I am only a plain man, but I am B.A. and I know something about my country, so I do not like to be told I am wrong when I am right. Oxford is a very fine place, and a very respectable place, I am sure, but that is not to say that every man who comes from there knows everything. A village schoolmaster may know better sometimes indeed.

  “Yes, I must say I did not like his airs, though I did not take it seriously then, and it was always Good day, Mr. Lloyd, Good day, Mr. Pugh, when we met in the village or in Llan. But I did not go and push myself on him; it would not have been right, even if I had liked his airs, me being so much an older man, and with a certain position in the neighborhood, and he did not come to see me. It was not until he fell ill in the autumn and was taken down to Gelli that I saw much of him. I visited him when he was ill, and when my cousin Pritchard Ellis, the well-known preacher, came to stay there I often went in the evenings to hear them talk. This was when Mr. Pugh was better again but was still lodging at Gelli.

  “It was a real pleasure to hear them talk. I did not like him very much then, but I admired the flow of language he had, and certainly he was very well informed: of course, he had no chance with Pritchard Ellis, the best talker I have ever heard, in Welsh or English. It did give me a kind of satisfaction, too, to hear him worsted: it showed we could stand up for ourselves in Wales, even without all the advantages. Once or twice he seemed to get the better of it, but Pritchard explained to me afterwards why this was; and once he became really violent about some political argument—I was not attending—and the discussion had to be stopped. No; in general he had no chance against Pritchard Ellis.

  “Well, that was my opinion of Mr. Pugh at that time. I did not care for him, nor did Pritchard, but he seemed to be an honest, respectable, quiet man, though proud and conceited.”

  Pugh

  That spring my uncle Caley, the lawyer, died: I had not seen him for twenty years and I had never liked him (an angry starched white prig) any more than he liked me, so I was not much affected by his death. However, he died intestate: I was his heir-at-law, and I felt a certain compunction in taking his money—he would so have disliked my having it. He was not a real uncle, but a cousin of the older generation.

  It did not take me long to overcome these scruples. No one else would naturally have benefited: Bernard was two or three degrees farther removed than myself, and although he always cried poverty he ran two cars and hung gee-gaws on his enormous wife until she looked like a Christmas tree. It was not really worth mentioning this; my compunction had vanished before the next post, but I felt that it was creditable in so poor a man to have entertained it so long.

  To resume: my uncle Caley died intestate, and I inherited. The first firm decision that came into my mind was to take Hafod and go and live in it. I would buy it if it was for sale or lease it if it were not, but at all events I would go and live there. I could now. Often, during my stay in the autumn I had said that if I searched a hundred years I should never chance on a place I liked more, and I had reckoned the number of years before I could retire: it was not the effect of first acquaintance or enthusiasm; I had been there long enough to see the disadvantages, but even if they had been doubled or trebled I should still have been of the same opinion.

  All through the winter I had thought of the cottage (I used to draw it in idle moments) and the valley and the good Vaughans at the farm. I had sent them a Christmas card, and I had intended to send the child a present, but I left it too late and could find nothing suitable.

  But now I could go there: the faint, ultimately-to-be-realized-perhaps dreams with which I had nourished myself in the winter—a garden, drainage, a bathroom—took on an immediate concrete reality. That was my one basic decision. A great many other things occurred to me, minor things; I was tempted by books, a piano and a car. I hesitated a long time over the car, and I believe that I would have bought it, if I had known how to drive.

  It was not really such a great deal of money; but up to that time I had never had a hundred pounds, clear, unmortgaged and expendable, in my hands at one time, so a sum of thousands appeared a great deal to me. The solicitor who acted for me referred to it as This little nest-egg, and showed me how, by careful investment it could be made to produce an income a little larger than that which I earned. He said it would be very useful as extra pocket-money; perhaps he meant it as a joke: it irritated me beyond words.

  For me it was a release. I had spent many happy days in my college, and there were many men I knew and liked in the university. But I was unsuited for my teaching duties; I performed them badly and with a great deal of pain, and to the end I could never stand up to lecture without dying a little private agony. And in recent years some of the men who had come into the college were not of the kind that I could like; they joined with one or two of the older fellows and the bursar to make what old Foley called “a corporate platitude and an underbred aggressive commonplace.”

  But with all these strong feelings (and I see that I have painted them rather larger than life), feelings that were profound more than vivid, I found my actual separation from my college much more painful than I had expected. Very painful: not merely twice or three times as painful but hundreds of times. My friends, they were so unexpectedly kind, but even more my—not exactly enemies, but the people to whom I was, in general, little more than civil, came up to me and said the most obliging things, and with a sincerity that I found very moving indeed. It was coals of fire, and often I was heartily ashamed of the feelings that I had entertained and the witticisms that I had made in petto.

  There was a presentation, speeches, and some good wine. They saw me off handsomely. My last sentimental pilgrimage and my last night in my old rooms cost me some hard tears.

  It was not a transient feeling: when I was sitting in the train it seemed to me that the disadvantages of a collegiate life had never been so slight, and never again could I recapture the strength of my dislike for it.

  I had hoped that Wales would compensate me for my sacrifice, but at Ruabon it was raining, and from there a dirty little train crawled spasmodically through cloud and showers, threading its interminable way through the invisible Principality. In the end I missed my station and I had all the difficulty in the world to find a cab that would take me from Llanfair up Cwm Bugail.

  When I reached my own house through the pouring rain it was dark and the fires had not been lighted: a tomb-like smell met me as I opened the door. The old woman from across the valley had either not received my note or had misunderstood it. I went straight to my damp bed and lay there shivering for an hour or two before I drifted off to a haunted sleep. It was a fitting end for a day that had begun with emotional exhaustion and had ended in extreme physical fatigue.

  Things looked much better in the morning. The sun was shining from a brilliant sky and the valley was looking finer than I had ever seen it. From my bed I looked straight out over to the other side, where the ridge of the Saeth sloped up right-handed to fill half my window. By moving a little I could see the peak itself, rising above a wisp of cloud like a veil, still just tinged with pink.

  The valley was full of lambs. Their voices were everywhere, loud and insistent, a hundred different tones; and everywhere the answering ewes, much deeper. I could see the lambs on the other side. So far away they were no more than white flecks, but brilliant white, and never still.

  Quite suddenly I felt active and happy, and I longed to be out. The air smelled wonderful in the garden, and there was a bird of some kind singing away, as I should have sung if I could. The boy from the farm appeared: he lurked about in view for some time and then shout
ed something in which I caught the word Parcels, and he pointed down to the farm. I went down and found that the kind people had taken in a number of things that I had sent to Hafod—household things and books, gramophone, records and so on—and had carefully stored them out of the rain. They were as welcoming as if I had been a native returning—how very pleasant it is to be made cordially welcome—and they insisted on giving me breakfast, ham of their own curing, eggs, a mountain of butter, and their own bread. Afterwards young Vaughan picked up my cases as though they were empty (I can think of nothing heavier nor more awkward than a box of gramophone records) and carried them up the hill to Hafod.

  For the next week I hardly stirred from the cottage. It is unusual, perhaps, for a man to reach middle age without ever having set up house; but I had not. It was terribly hard work: when one is naturally unhandy and has to learn all the techniques for the first time the putting up of a single shelf is a day’s labor; but Lord, the satisfaction of putting the books on it, clearing the floor of them and their packing, stowing away the boxes and reducing the place to something like order. There is a wonderful satisfaction, a feeling of accomplishment when you sit down for the first time in a neat room and look at the straight rows, one above another to the ceiling, all standing square on solid bases. Without being a bibliomaniac it has always seemed to me that books are the supreme decoration of a room, and I took the liveliest pleasure in arranging them according to their height and color.

  I had a great disappointment, however; it was the defection of Mrs. Bowen, who was to do for me. It was a blow, for I had based my assumptions, my projected way of life on somebody else doing the cooking and the work of the household. She was a savage old creature, with rather less notion than myself about the running of a house, but I had taken a liking to her in the autumn, and I had hoped that she might get better with practice. It was an extravagant hope, as I should have known from the visits I paid her: her place was spick and span outside (she was a great gardener) but the interior, as much as could be seen of it in the gloom, was a congestion of huge vases, rococo furniture and tin trunks ajar. Most of these objects still had their lot numbers: the old lady had a passion for auctions, and attended every sale within twenty miles. She knew the mountain paths like a shepherd, and she could be seen in the wild desolation of the Diffwys creeping along bowed under a crimson pouffe or even, as I found her once, recruiting her strength on an Empire buffet, poised on the black crag above the silent, menacing Llyn Du.