My Neighbors: Stories of the Welsh PeopleEvans, Caradoc
General
My Neighbors: Stories of the Welsh People
Evans, Caradoc
Wales -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
Gwen told him the errand upon which she was bent, and while they two
drank tea, Ben said: "Sing you a song, Messes Enos-Harries. Not
forgotten have I your singing in Queen's Hall on the Day of David the
Saint. Inspire me wonderfully you did with the speech. I've been sad
too, but you are a wedded female. Sing you now then. Push your cup and
saucer under the chair."
"No-no, not in tone am I," Gwen feigned.
"How about a Welsh hymn? Come in will I at the repeats."
"Messes Lloyd will sing the piano?"
"Go must she about her duties. She's a handless poor dab."
Gwen played and sang.
"Solemn pretty hymns have we," said Ben. "Are we not large?" He moved
and stood under a picture which hung on the wall--his knees touching and
his feet apart--and the picture was that of Cromwell. "My friends say I
am Cromwell and Milton rolled into one. The Great Father gave me a child
and He took him back to the Palace. Religious am I. Want I do to live my
life in the hills and valleys of Wales: listening to the anthem of
creation, and searching for Him under the bark of the tree. And there I
shall wait for the sound of the last trumpet."
"A poet you are." Gwen was astonished.
"You are a poetess, for sure me," Ben said. He leaned over her.
"Sparkling are your eyes. Deep brown are they--brown as the nut in the
paws of the squirrel. Be you a bard and write about boys Cymru. Tell how
they succeed in big London."
"I will try," said Gwen.
"Like you are and me. Think you do as I think."
"Know you for long I would," said Gwen.
"For ever," cried Ben. "But wedded you are. Read you a bit of the
lecture will I." Having ended his reading and having sobbed over and
praised that which he had read, Ben uttered: "Certain you come again.
Come you and eat supper when the wife is not at home."
Gwen quaked as she went to her car, and she sought a person who
professed to tell fortunes, and whom she made to say: "A gentleman is in
love with you. And he loves you for your brain. He is not your husband.
He is more to you than your husband. I hear his silver voice holding
spellbound hundreds of people; I see his majestic forehead and his
auburn locks and the strands of his silken mustache."
Those words made Gwen very happy, and she deceived herself that they
were true. She composed verses and gave them to Ben.
"Not right to Nature is this," said Ben. "The mother is wrong. How many
children you have, Messes Enos-Harries?"
"Not one. The husband is weak and he is older much than I."
"The Father has kept His most beautiful gift from you. Pity that is."
Tears gushed from Ben's eyes. "If the marriage-maker had brought us
together, children we would have jeweled with your eyes and crowned with
your hair."
"And your intellect," said Gwen. "You will be the greatest Welshman."
"Whisper will I now. A drag is the wife. Happy you are with the
husband."
"Why for you speak like that?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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