My Neighbors Part 4

Men and women, soothed into false ease and quickened into counterfeit wrath, commended him, crying: "Thank G.o.d for Ben Lloyd." Such praise puffed him up, and howsoever mighty he was in the view of fools, he was mightier in his own view.

"At the next election I'll be in Parliament," he boasted in his vanity.

"The basis of my solidity--strength--is as immovable--is as impregnable as Birds' Rock in Morfa."

Though the grandson of Simon Idiot and Dull Anna prophesied great things for himself, it was evil that came to him.

He trembled from head to foot to ravish every comely woman on whom his ogling eyes dwelt. His greed made him faithless to those whom he professed to serve: in his eagerness to lift himself he planned, plotted, and trafficked with the foes of his officers. Hearing that an account of his misdeeds was spoken abroad, he called the high London Welshmen into a room, and he said to them:

"These cruel slanderers have all but broken my spirit. They are the wicked inventions of fiends incarnate. It is not my fall that is required--if that were so I would gladly make the sacrifise--the zupreme sacrifise, if wanted--but it is the fall of the Party that these men are after. He who repeats one foul thing is doing his level best to destroy the fabric of this magnificent organisation that has been reared by your brains. It has no walls of stone and mortar, yet it is a sity builded by men. We must have no more bickerings. We have work to do. The seeds are springing forth, and a goodly harvest is promised: let us sharpen our blades and clear our barn floors. Cymru fydd--Wales for the Welsh--is here. At home and at Westminster our kith and kin are occupying prominent positions. Disestablishment is at hand. We have closed public-houses and erected chapels, each chapel being a factor in the education of the ma.s.ses in ideas of righteous government. You, my friends, have secured much of the land, around which you have made walls, and in which you have set water fountains, and have planted rare plants and flowers. And you have put up your warning signs on it--'Trespa.s.sers will be prosecuted.'

"There is coming the Registration of Workers Act, by which every worker will be held to his locality, to his own enormous advantage. And it will end strikes, and trades unionism will deservedly crumble. In future these men will be able to settle down, and with G.o.d's blessing bring children into the world, and their condition will be a delight unto themselves and a profit to the community.

"But we must do more. I must do more. And you must help me. We must stand together. Slander never creates; it shackles and kills. We must be solid. Midway off the Cardigan coast--in beautiful Morfa--there is a rock--Birds' Rock. As a boy I used to climb to the top of it, and watch the waters swirling and tumbling about it, and around it and against it.

But I was unafraid. For I knew that the rock was old when man was young, and that it had braved all the was.h.i.+ngs of the sea."

The men congratulated Ben; and Ben came home and he stood at a mirror, and shaping his body put out his arms.

"How's this for my maiden speech in the house?" he asked his wife.

Presently he paused. "You're a fine one to be an M.P.'s lady," he said.

"You stout, underworked fool."

Ben urged on his imaginings: he advised his monarch, and to him for favors merchants brought their gold, and mothers their daughters. Winter and spring moved, and then his mind brought his enemies to his door.

"As the root of a tree spreads in the bosom of the earth," he said, "so my fame shall spread over the world"; and he built a fence about his house.

But his mind would not be stilled. Every midnight his enemies were at the fence, and he could not sleep for the dreadful outcry; every midnight he arose from his bed and walked aside the fence, testing the strength of it with a hand and a shoulder and shooing away his enemies as one does a brood of chickens from a cornfield.

His fortieth summer ran out--a season of short days and nights speeding on the heels of night. Then peace fell upon him; and at dusk of a day he came into his room, and he saw one sitting in a chair. He went up to the chair and knelt on a knee, and said: "Your Majesty...."

III

THE TWO APOSTLES

G.o.d covered sun, moon, and stars, stilled the growing things of the earth and dried up the waters on the face of the earth, and stopped the roll of the world; and He fixed upon a measure of time in which to judge the peoples, this being the measure which was spoken of as the Day of Judgment.

In the meanseason He summoned Satan to the Judgment Hall, which is at the side of the river that breaks into four heads, and above which, its pulpits stretching beyond the sky, is the Palace of White s.h.i.+rts, and below which, in deep darknesses, are the frightful regions of the Fiery Oven. "Give an account of your rule in the face of those whom you provoked to mischief," He said to Satan. "My balance hitched to a beam will weigh the good and evil of my children, and if good is heavier than evil, I shall lighten your countenance and clothe you with the robes of angels."

"Awake the dead" He bade the Trumpeter, and "Lift the lids off the burying-places" He bade the laborers. In their generations were they called; "for," said the Lord, "good and evil are customs of a period and when the period is pa.s.sed and the next is come, good may be evil and evil may be good."

Now G.o.d did not put His entire trust in Satan, and in the evening of the day He set to prove him: "It is over."

"My Lord, so be it," answered Satan.

"How now?" asked G.o.d.

"The scale of wickedness sways like a kite in the wind," cried Satan.

"Give me my robes and I will transgress against you no more."

"In the Book of Heaven and h.e.l.l," said G.o.d, "there is no writing of the last of the Welsh."

Satan spoke up: "My Lord, your pledge concerned those judged on the Day of Judgment. Day is outing. The windows of the Mansion are lit; hark the angels tuning their golden strings for the cheer of the Resurrection Supper. Give me my robes that I may sing your praises."

"Can I not lengthen the day with a wink of my eye?"

"All things you can do, my Lord, but observe your pledge to me. Allow these people to rest a while longer. Their number together with the number of their sins is fewer than the hairs on Elisha's head."

G.o.d laughed in His heart as He replied to Satan: "Tell the Trumpeter to take his horn and the laborers their spades and bring to me the Welsh."

The laborers digged, and at the sound of the horn the dead breathed and heaved. Those whose wit was sharp hurried into neighboring chapels and stole Bibles and hymn-books, with which in their pockets and under their arms they joined the host in Heaven's Courtyard, whence they went into the Waiting Chamber that is without the Judgment Hall.

"Boy bach, a lot of Books of the Word he has," a woman remarked to the Respected Towy-Watkins. "Say him I have one."

"Happy would I be to do like that," was the reply. "But, female, much does the Large One regard His speeches. What is the text on the wall?

'Prepare your deeds for the Lord.' The Beybile is the most religious deed. Farewell for now," and he pretended to go away.

Holding the sleeve of his White s.h.i.+rt, the woman separated her toothless gums and fas.h.i.+oned her wrinkled face in grief. "Two tens he has," she croaked. "And his s.h.i.+rt is clean. Dirty am I; buried I was as I was found, and the shovelers beat the soil through the top of the coffin. Do much will I for one Beybile."

"A poor dab you are," said Towy.

"Many deeds you have? But no odds to me."

"Four I have."

"Woe for you, unfortunate."

"Iss-iss, horrid is my plight," the woman whined. "Little I did for Him."

"Don't draw tears. For eternity you'll weep. Here is a ma.s.sive Beybile for your four deeds."

"Take him one. Handy will three be in the minute of the questioning."

"Refusing the Beybile bach you are. Also the hymn-book--old and new notations--I present for four. Stupid am I as the pigger's prentice who bought the litter in the belly."

"Be him soft and sell for one."

"I cannot say less. No relation you are to me. Hope I do that right enough are your four. Recite them to me, old woman."

"I ate rats to provide a Beybile to the Respected," the woman trembled.

"I--"

"You are pathetic," Towy said. "Hie and get your tokens and have that poor one will I because of my pity for you."

The woman told her deeds in Heaven's Record Office, and she was given four white tablets on which her deeds were inscribed; and the rat tablet Towy took from her. "Faith and hope are tidy heifers," he said, "but a stallion is charity. Priceless Beybile I give you, sinner."