The Making of William Edwards Part 11

'Carry your pitchers into the house, and stay there!' cried her father.

Then turning to the boy, who hesitated whether to linger or walk on, he said kindly--

'Never mind Cate, my little man, she talks foolishness. Come and sit on this bench beside me. I'll try to serve instead of Robert Jones.'

William's face lit up. He climbed to a seat by the weaver's side, content to find he was no longer laughed at. And very intently he listened to Owen's simple explanation that the mountain was nearly all stone, and that a quarry was the place where strong men broke away the stone for building walls and houses, and that the mountains had been there ever since G.o.d created the world, so that he did not think stone grew. And if Owen's was not a learned geological definition, it was all the better adapted to juvenile comprehension. But, simple as it was, a shower of whys and hows were rained on the exponent during its course.

Then William rose to depart, but something in his face, or in his lagging gait, or a casual word, caused the weaver to interrogate the boy. This elicited the admission that he had strayed away from home in the morning, and that no one knew, and, moreover, that he was very hungry.

Owen looked grave. He called for Cate to bring some bread and a cup of milk, and began to read the boy a lesson on the inconsiderate wrong he had done, and the anxiety he would cause his mother.

'You should never leave home without permission, Willem. Your poor mother will be fretting and crying for fear lest you have fallen over the rocks, or got into the river and been drowned, or lost your way on the mountain as you did four years ago, when Evan found you asleep under the Druids' rocking-stone. It is very cruel and wicked for a child to stray from home without leave.'

William hung his head. 'I did not mean any harm,' he began; 'but,' in a changed tone, 'what's the Druids?'--

'Oh, you're here, are you? A fine hunt you have given us all, you young plague,' came in an angry shout from Rhys, who had crossed the brook and was advancing at a run.

William's question died away unanswered. He got down from his stone seat inclined to be penitent for his misbehaviour. Owen Griffith had shown him that he had done wrong. He might have gone home and told his mother he was sorry. But Rhys, who had been as much alarmed at his absence as the rest, now he was found, caught him by the shoulder and shook him roughly.

'Look you, if you do be running off again, I shall give you a good thras.h.i.+ng.'

"Deed you won't,' was thrown back at him defiantly by William, whose penitence was at an end.

'Won't I? You'll see. Sure, I've half a mind to do it now.'

'Nay, nay,' interposed Griffith. 'Willem is sorry. He did not know he was doing wrong.'

'Then he will have to learn. It's quite time he made himself useful.

Jonet did before she was his age. And so did I. We can have no idlers on our farm, whatever. Ah, Cate, is that you?' His voice had brought the girl to the open window. She leaned out, blus.h.i.+ng like a peony. He joined her, and said something which made her giggle and provoked reply.

Then ensued some whispering and laughter. Rhys apparently forgot all about William and his mother's anxiety whilst occupied so pleasantly, for there was no doubt Cate had more than a third-cousinly attraction for him, and chance opportunities for seeing her except on Sundays were not frequent.

When his errand recurred to him, William had disappeared, and notwithstanding Rhys' longer legs, the fatigue of the small ones, the gathering dusk, and the steepness of the ascending path to the farm, the truant crossed the threshold first.

At once uneasiness resolved itself into displeasure. He was scolded on all sides, and threatened with the loss of a supper if ever he ventured to give them such a fright again.

'I wanted Robert Jones,' was all the excuse he made. The scolding was received with stolid silence, which was called sullenness.

Yet he had not forgotten Owen's picture of his mother's distress, or his grave reproof for straying away, and had he been differently received, he might have been contrite and sued for pardon.

It is a difficult matter, even in these a.n.a.lytic days, to search out the inner workings of the child-mind, or to understand all that influences wayward moods. How were those rudely-cultivated farmers to penetrate beneath the surface, to see the undeveloped oak in the immature acorn?

'Robert Jones do be spoiling that boy,' said Mrs. Edwards, when the child was in bed. 'I wonder what he wanted with the man?'

'Wanted? Sure, he wanted to ask if stones do grow like trees,' said Rhys, in a tone of impatient scorn. 'It was only last week he did be asking me if the trees made the wind, because it was always windy when the trees tossed about.'

'Well, _don't_ they?' queried stolid Davy, amidst a roar of laughter, in which even the mother joined.

'Now, don't you be as silly as Willem. I never before knew you ask such a foolish question,' said Rhys dogmatically.

'No, Davy,' explained his mother, without stopping her busy wheel, 'it is the wind that blows the trees about,'--an answer which sufficed for him. He was not curious to learn what caused the winds, or whence they came, as William had been. He accepted facts as they were, untroubled by vain speculations.

Undoubtedly William--the father's namesake, her youngest born--was the mother's darling, in spite of his odd ways. And however cross she might have been overnight, in the morning, when the others had dispersed, she took him to task for straying away without leave; not angrily, but sadly, showing him the trouble he was likely to cause, and the anxiety she had had, remembering the time when he was lost before.

It was a very effectual supplement to Owen Griffith's lecture; the sensitive boy's feelings were touched. He threw his arms around her neck, begged forgiveness, and promised the best of behaviour for the future.

Alas, for a child's promises! William went to work beside Jonet like a little man, helped in seed-time and harvest, and won commendations from Ales and Evan. But he had his dreamy hours; he continued to pile up stones in odd corners, and was alternately ridiculed and rebuked by Rhys, whose interference he resented.

This went on for about two years, trying the patience of both, and then came a more serious outbreak.

CHAPTER XI.

A MEMORABLE ENCOUNTER.

William's rebellion had begun to show itself in sullen disregard of his brother's orders. He was always active and willing when his mother or Evan called him--Davy might convey a message, but never had an independent order to give--he was Jonet's obedient bondslave, but when Rhys demanded his services or attention he generally turned a deaf ear.

For this, Rhys--who considered his ten years' seniority quite a warranty for control as his mother's deputy and his dead father's representative--took him to task imperiously, not with any desire to be knowingly overbearing, but from a stern sense of his own duty to a lazy lad.

At length, one bright day in early spring, when William was little more than nine years of age, he stood lingering after the midday meal close beside the stone gate-posts of a field where Davy and Jonet were already busy weeding a freshly springing crop of corn. His arms rested upon the coping of the wall with his chin upon them, whilst he, looking down into the fertile vale below--where glimpses of the s.h.i.+ning river were discernible like twinkling stars, through the tender green shoots which veiled the swaying boughs on its densely-wooded banks--seemed lost in a dreamy mist of speculative thought. The boy's reverie was rudely broken.

'Now then, lazyback! What do you be doing there?' called out Rhys, who carried a spade on one shoulder and a wicker basket in his hand, which he tossed down at his brother's feet. No answer coming, he called out again, 'What do you be doing there?'

'I do be thinking,' came composedly from William.

'Thinking, indeed! I wish you would be thinking about your work. What can you have to think about, whatever?'

"Deed, n.o.body knows my thinks,' replied the boy, without turning round.

'You will very soon know _my thinks_,' retorted Rhys, 'if you do not pick up your basket, and get to your weeding. You are one of the "late and lazy who will never be rich." Come, stir you.' And, as if to enforce obedience, Rhys raised his disengaged hand and struck the other a sharp blow across the shoulders.

At once William turned round, his cheeks and eyes aflame. Rhys thought he was about to strike him back again.

Instead, he gave the empty basket a kick that sent it flying over the ridges, and was out at the narrow gateway in an instant, with a defiant air that seemed to dare Rhys to lay hands upon him again, or attempt to draw him back.

That day he was seen no more upon the farm until nightfall, when he was sent to bed supperless as a punishment.

He was up betimes in the morning, and had the fire alight before any one else was astir. He was having a wash at the spring when Ales came into the farmyard.

'Name o' goodness!' exclaimed she, 'what's got you out of bed so soon?

Want your breakfast, I suppose?'

William nodded in a.s.sent, on his way to the common towel.

'Do you think you be deserving any?'

'Does Rhys be deserving any?'

Ales had a proverb ready, 'Who does well, deserves well.'