Cities and towns -- Growth -- Fiction; Wales -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
As far as the Hafod Unos was concerned, Mr. Tudor Williams's visit now
seemed superfluous.
VII
THE MEMBER
Ostensibly, Mr. Tudor Williams came to Llanyglo to assist at a Sasiwn,
which is a gathering very much like the Love Feasts of other parts of
the country (indeed, if memory serves, Mr. Wesley gave these assemblies
for prayer and mutual consolation the latter name as far north in Wales
as Builth--but then Mr. Wesley did not speak Welsh). Neither the fencing
dispute nor the question of the Hafod Unos had taken nominal precedence
of this. But Mr. Tudor Williams's visit was also something more. He was
a Member returning to his own constituency--exalted, yet their servant,
familiar with the great ones of the land, yet by their favour. For that
reason they liked him to bring the evidences of his greatness back with
him.
Mr. Tudor Williams did so, and handsomely. He was a small nimble man
with black brows and a ragged silvery moustache, and a very erect and
conscious carriage of the head. He wore a silk hat, a turned-down collar
with a flat black bow, a frockcoat with voluminous lapels of watered
silk, grey trousers, and new black kid gloves. He drove from Porth Neigr
in the carriage that had been lent him by a political supporter, and
alighted at the gap opposite John Pritchard's farm. They would have run
forward to greet him, but a certain awe of his clothes and equipage
combined with their own dignity as makers and unmakers of such as he to
keep them where they stood, in a semicircle across the road.
But if they were at one and the same time a little intimidated and
filled out with pride in him, Mr. Tudor Williams knew no hesitation. He
sprang down from the carriage, grasped John Pritchard by the hand, and
then, not content with that, patted him all up the arm as far as the
shoulder and across the breast with the other hand, as if he conferred
invisible decorations on him. His eyes were moist, but glad greetings
flowed from his tongue, in an accent that would have put the most
diffident speaker of English at his ease.
"Well, John Pritchard! Well, well! Indeed you have not grown any less! A
lit-tle man like me, I hardly reach up to your shoulder! Aw-w-w, you
look splen-did! I was spik-king of you a few days ago to the Member for
Carnarvon Boroughs--but dear me, here am I neglecting the ladies--I tell
you presently--How are you, Mrs. Gruffydd? This young man is never
Eesaac Oliver! Aw-w-w, how he grows! Did you write the let-ter to me,
Eesaac Oliver? That's the style! Education, knowledge--it is a grand
thing!--Now, Dafydd Dafis! And how is the harp? You sing me _Y Gadlys_
by and by:
'_Mae cynhwrf yn y ceunant,
Ar derfyn dydd y gad_----'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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