My Neighbors Part 3

"'Go give the male his beast,' mishtir talked."

"Right for you are," said Abel.

"Right for enough is the rascal. But a creature without blemish he pilfered. Hit her and hie her off."

As Lissi was about to go, Ben cried from within the house: "The cow the fulbert had was worth two of his cows."

"Sure, iss-iss," said Abel. "Go will I to Vicarage with boys capel.

Bring the baston, Ben bach."

Ben came out, and his ardor warmed up on beholding Lissi's broad hips, scarlet cheeks, white teeth, and full bosoms.

"Not blaming you, girl fach, am I," he said. "My father, journey with Gwen. Walk will I with Lissi Workhouse."

That afternoon Abel brought a cow in calf into his close; and that night Ben crossed the mown hayfields to the Vicarage, and he threw a little gravel at Lissi's window.

The hay was gathered and stacked and thatched, and the corn was cut down, and to the women who were gleaning his father's oats, Ben said how that Lissi was in the family way.

"Silence your tone, indeed," cried one, laughing. "No sign have I seen."

"If I died," observed a large woman, "boy bach pretty innocent you are, Benshamin. Four months have I yet. And not showing much do I."

"No," said another, "the bulk might be only the coil of your ap.r.o.n, ho-ho."

"Whisper to us," asked the large woman, "who the foxer is. Keep the news will we."

"Who but the scamp of the Parson?" replied Ben. "What a sow of a hen."

By such means Ben s.h.i.+fted his offense. On being charged by the Parson he rushed through the roads crying that the enemy of the Big Man had put unbecoming words on a harlot's tongue. Capel Dissenters believed him.

"He could not act wrongly with a sheep," some said.

So Ben tasted the sapidness and relish of power, and his desires increased.

"Mortgage Deinol, my father bach," he said to Abel. "Going am I to London. Heavy shall I be there. None of the dirty English are like me."

"Already have I borrowed for your college. No more do I want to have.

How if I sell a horse?"

"Sell you the horse too, my father bach."

"Done much have I for you," Abel said. "Fairish I must be with your sisters."

"Why for you cavil like that, father? The money of mam came to Deinol.

Am I not her son?"

Though his daughters, murmured--"We wake at the caw of the crows," they said, "and weary in the young of the day"--Abel obeyed his son, who thereupon departed and came to Thornton East to the house of Catherine Jenkins, a widow woman, with whom he took the appearance of a burning lover.

Though he preached with a view at many English chapels in London, none called him. He caused Abel to sell cattle and mortgage Deinol for what it was worth and to give him all the money he received therefrom; he swore such hot love for Catherine that the woman p.a.w.ned her furniture for his sake.

Intrigued that such scant fruit had come up from his sowings, Ben thought of further ways of stablis.h.i.+ng himself. He inquired into the welfare of shop-a.s.sistants from women and girls who wors.h.i.+ped in Welsh chapels, and though he spoiled several in his quest, the abominations which oppressed these workers were made known to him. Shop-a.s.sistants carried abroad his fame and called him "Fiery Taffy." Ben showed them how to rid themselves of their burden; "a burden," he said, "packed full and overflowing by men of my race--the London Welsh drapers."

The Welsh drapers were alarmed, and in a rage with Ben. They took the opinion of their big men and performed slyly. Enos-Harries--this is the Enos-Harries who has a drapery shop in Kingsend--sent to Ben this letter: "Take Dinner with Slf and Wife same, is Late Dinner I am pleased to inform. You we don't live in Establishment only as per printed Note Heading. And Oblige."

Enos-Harries showed Ben his house, and told him the cost of the treasures that were therein.

Also Harries said: "I have learned of you as a promising Welshman, and I want to do a good turn for you with a speech by you on St. David's Day at Queen's Hall. Now, then."

"I am not important enough for that."

"She'll be a first-cla.s.s miting in tip-top speeches. All the drapers and dairies shall be there in crowds. Three sirs shall come."

"I am choked with engagements," said Ben. "I am preaching very busy now just."

"Well-well. Asked I did for you are a clean Cymro bach. As I repeat, only leading lines in speakers shall be there. Come now into the drawing-room and I'll give you an intro to the Missus Enos-Harries. In evening dress she is--chik Paris Model. The invoice price was ten-ten."

"Wait a bit," Ben remarked. "I would be glad if I could speak."

"Perhaps the next time we give you the invite. The Cymrodorion shall be in the miting."

"As you plead, try I will."

"Stretching a point am I," Harries said. "This is a favor for you to address this glorious miting where the Welsh drapers will attend and the Missus Enos-Harries will sing 'Land of my Fathers.'"

Ben withdrew from his fellows for three days, and on the third day--which was that of the Saint--he put on him a frock coat, and combed down his mustache over the blood-red swelling on his lip; and he cleaned his teeth. Here are some of the sayings that he spoke that night:

"Half an hour ago we were privileged to listen to the voice of a lovely lady--a voice as clear as a diamond ring. It inspired us one and all with a hireath for the dear old homeland--for dear Wales, for the land of our fathers and mothers too, for the land that is our heritage not by Act of Parliament but by the Act of G.o.d....

"Who ownss this land to-day? The squaire and the parshon. By what right?

By the same right as the thief who steals your silk and your laces, and your milk and b.u.t.ter, and your reddy-made blousis. I know a farm of one hundred acres, each rod having been tamed from heatherland into a manna of abundance. Tamed by human bones and muscles--G.o.d's invested capital in His chosen children. Six months ago this land--this fertile and rich land--was wrestled away from the owners. The bones of the living and the dead were wrestled away. I saw it three months ago--a wylderness. The clod had been squeesed of its zweat. The land belonged to my father, and his father, and his father, back to countless generations....

"I am proud to be among my people to-night. How sorry I am for any one who are not Welsh. We have a language as ancient as the hills that shelter us, and the rivers that never weery of refres.h.i.+ng us....

"Only recently a few shop-a.s.sistants--a handful of counter-jumpers--tried to shake the integrity of our commerse. But their white cuffs held back their aarms, and the white collars choked their aambitions. When I was a small boy my mam used to tell me how the chief Satan was caught trying to put his hand over the sun so as to give other satans a chance of doing wrong on earth in the dark. That was the object of these misguided fools. They had no grievances. I have since investigated the questions of living-in and fines. Both are fair and necessary. The man who tries to destroy them is like the swimmer who plunges among the water lilies to be dragged into destruction....

"Welsh was talked in the Garden of Aden. That is where commerse began.

Didn't Eve buy the apple?...

"Ladies and gentlemen, Cymrodorion, listen. There is a going in these cla.s.sical old rafterss. It is the coming of G.o.d. And the message He gives you this night is this: 'Men of Gwalia, march on and keep you tails up.'"

From that hour Ben flourished. He broke his league with the shop-a.s.sistants. Those whom he had troubled lost courage and humbled themselves before their employers; but their employers would have none of them, man or woman, boy or girl.

Vexation followed his prosperity. His father reproached him, writing: "Sad I drop into the Pool as old Abel Tybach, and not as Lloyd Deinol."

Catherine hara.s.sed him to recover her house and chattels. To these complainings he was deaf. He married the daughter of a wealthy Englishman, who set him up in a large house in the midst of a pleasure garden; and of the fatness and redness of his wife he was sickened before he was wedded to her.

By studying diligently, the English language became as familiar to him as the Welsh language. He bound himself to Welsh politicians and engaged himself in public affairs, and soon he was as an idol to a mult.i.tude of people, who were sensible only to his well-sung words, and who did not know that his utterances veiled his own avarice and that of his masters.

All that he did was for profit, and yet he could not win enough.