Cities and towns -- Growth -- Fiction; Wales -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
Its wild thyme will remain only in
patches on its Trwyn, and its sandhills will be glaucous with the blue
sea-holly no more. The black cattle have not much longer in which to
pace its shore, and Terry Armfield's gridiron will be forgotten--no
_Sixpenny Guide_ will point the way down Delyn Avenue nor past his
immaterial Crescents along Trwyn Way. Railhead is creeping on. Two of
the Kerrs are already working there, the other two have just bought the
last of Squire Wynne's alders. Squire Wynne has now no land except that
occupied by the Plas and its tangled and mossy and grassy and neglected
gardens. "_Porth Neigr Omnibuses, Limited_," is already a serious
undertaking, for it will ply between Llanyglo and the nearest point of
the line. Howell Gruffydd has an option on the two original cottages
that Edward Garden had had matchboarded--he may soon be requiring a
larger shop. Compensations will be paid right and left. And there will
soon be a larger assortment of young men for Miss Nancy Pritchard to
choose a husband from....
For something is coming to Llanyglo.
* * * * *
Mr. Tudor Williams Ponteglwys had been clever enough in the matter of
the Omnibuses, Limited, nor, for the matter of that, had his cleverness
stopped there; but for astuteness he could not hold a candle to Edward
Garden. Edward Garden was not a Member of Parliament. As he musingly
said when people asked him why he was not, it was out of his line.
Therefore, he and his friends had left to others the promotion of the
Bill, its steering through Select Committees of both Houses, and the
whole conduct of the negotiations that, in their different way, were no
less complicated than that concentration of various forces by virtue of
which Railhead crept ever slowly forward. To a regiment of lawyers had
likewise been left the adjustments under the general Acts to which, on
the passing of the Bill, the enterprise had become subject. Members and
lawyers alike, those drest in a little brief obedience to the commands
of the party whips, these as often as not Members themselves, were
virtually the nominees of Edward Garden and his friends. Politics Edward
Garden's "line"?... To all outward appearances he had no "line" at all.
He merely added another emblem to that little cluster of Mercuries and
Greyhounds and Winged Orbs that formed the pendant of his watch-chain.
It was only when others, full of plans and hope and secrecy, sought
"lines" for themselves that they discovered that he had been beforehand
with them. To give an instance: When Mr. Tudor Williams, M.P.,
apparently as representing somebody else, had come forward with an offer
to take up the remnants of poor Terry's Thelema, he had found there
were no remnants to take up. To give another instance: When, by
carefully engineered good offices and intermediaries, Mr. Tudor Williams
had sought a reconciliation with Squire Wynne, and presently had gone to
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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