MY NEIGHBORS
STORIES OF THE WELSH PEOPLE

BY
CARADOC EVANS


NEW YORK
HARCOURT, BRACE AND HOWE
1920




COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY
HARCOURT, BRACE AND HOWE, INC.


THE QUINN & BODEN COMPANY
RAHWAY, N.J.




TO
MY FRIEND
THOMAS BURKE
OF "LIMEHOUSE NIGHTS"




CONTENTS


CHAPTER                                        PAGE

THE WELSH PEOPLE                           3
I.  LOVE AND HATE                             11
II.  ACCORDING TO THE PATTERN                  31
III.  THE TWO APOSTLES                          59
IV.  EARTHBRED                                 81
V.  FOR BETTER                                99
VI.  TREASURE AND TROUBLE                     117
VII.  SAINT DAVID AND THE PROPHETS             131
VIII.  JOSEPH'S HOUSE                           155
IX.  LIKE BROTHERS                            173
X.  A WIDOW WOMAN                            187
XI.  UNANSWERED PRAYERS                       199
XII.  LOST TREASURE                            215
XIII.  PROFIT AND GLORY                         231




THE WELSH PEOPLE


Our God is a big man: a tall man much higher than the highest chapel in
Wales and broader than the broadest chapel. For the promised day that He
comes to deliver us a sermon we shall have made a hole in the roof and
taken down a wall. Our God has a long, white beard, and he is not unlike
the Father Christmas of picture-books. Often he lies on his stomach on
Heaven's floor, an eye at one of his myriads of peepholes, watching that
we keep his laws. Our God wears a frock coat, a starched linen collar
and black necktie, and a silk hat, and on the Sabbath he preaches to the
congregation of Heaven.

Heaven is a Welsh chapel; but its pulpit is of gold, and its walls,
pews, floor, roof, harmonium, and its clock--which marks the days of the
month as well as the hours of the day--are of glass. The inhabitants are
clothed in the white shirts in which they were buried and in which they
arose at the Call; and the language of God and his angels and of the
Company of Prophets is Welsh, that being the language spoken in the
Garden of Eden and by Jacob, Moses, Abraham, and Elijah.

Wales is Heaven on earth, and every Welsh chapel is a little Heaven; and
God has favored us greatly by choosing to rule over us preachers who are
fashioned in his likeness and who are without spot or blemish.

Every Welsh child knows that the preacher is next to God; "I am the Big
Man's photograph," the preacher shouts; and the child is brought up in
the fear of the preacher.

Jealous of his trust, the preacher has made rules for the salvation of
our bodies and souls. Temptations such as art, drama, dancing, and the
study of folklore he has removed from our way. Those are vanities, which
make men puffed up and vainglorious; and they are unsavory in the
nostrils of the Big Man. And look you, the preacher asks, do they not
cost money? Are they not time wasters? The capel needs your money, boys
bach, that the light--the grand, religious light--shall shine in the
pulpit.

That is the lamp which burns throughout Wales. It keeps our feet from
Church door and public house, and it guides us to the polling booth
where we record our votes as the preacher has instructed us. Be the
season never so hard and be men and women never so hungry, its flame
does not wane and the oil in its vessel is not low.

White cabbages and new potatoes, eggs and measures of corn, milk and
butter and money we give to the preacher. We trim our few acres until
our shoulders are crutched and the soil is in the crevices of our flesh
that his estate shall be a glory unto God. We make for him a house which
is as a mansion set amid hovels and for the building thereof the widow
must set aside portions of her weekly old age pension. These things and
many more we do, for forgiveness of sin is obtained by sacrifice. Such
folk as hold back their offerings have their names proclaimed in the
pulpit.

Said the preacher: "Heavy was the punishment of the Big Man on Twm Cwm,
persons, because Twm speeched against the capel. Was he not put in the
coffin in his farm trowsis and jacket? And do you know, the Big Man cast
a brightness on his buttons for him to be known in the blackness of
hell."

It is no miracle that we are religious. Our God is just behind the
preacher, and he is in the semblance of the preacher; and we believe in
him truly. It is no miracle that we are prayerful. Our God is by us in
our hagglings and cheatings. Becca Penffos prays that the dealer's eyes
are closed to the disease of her hen; Shon Porth asks the Big Man to
destroy his pregnant sister into whose bed Satan enticed him; Ianto
Tybach says: "Give me a nice bit of haymaking weather, God bach. Strike
my brother Enoch dead and blind and see I have his fields without any
old bother. A champion am I in the religion and there's gifts I give the
preacher. Ask him. That's all. Amen."

Although we know God, we are afraid of to-morrow: one will steal our
seeds, a horse will perish, our wife will die and a servant woman will
have to be hired to the time that we find another wife, the Englishman
whom we defrauded in the market place will come and seek his rights.

We are what we have been made by our preachers and politicians, and thus
we remain. Among ourselves our repute is ill. Our villages and
countryside are populated with the children of cousins who have married
cousins and of women who have played the harlot with their brothers; and
no one loves his neighbor. Abroad we are distrusted and disdained. This
is said of us: "A Welshman's bond is as worthless as his word." We
traffic in prayers and hymns, and in the name of Jesus Christ, and we
display a spurious heart upon our breast. Our politicians, crafty pupils
of the preachers and now their masters, weep and moan in the public
places as if they were women in childbirth; in their souls they are
lustful and cruel and greedy. They have made themselves the slaves of
the wicked, and like asses their eyes are lifted no higher than the
golden carrot which is their reward from the wicked. Not of one of us it
can be said: "He is a great man," or "He is a good man," or "He is an
honest man."

Maybe the living God will consider our want of knowledge and act
mercifully toward us.




I

LOVE AND HATE


By living frugally--setting aside a portion of his Civil Service pay and
holding all that he got from two butchers whose trade books he kept in
proper order--Adam Powell became possessed of Cartref in which he dwelt
and which is in Barnes, and two houses in Thornton East; and one of the
houses in Thornton East he let to his widowed daughter Olwen, who
carried on a dressmaking business. At the end of his term he retired
from his office, his needs being fulfilled by a pension, and his evening
eased by the ministrations of his elder daughter Lisbeth.

Soon an inward malady seized him, and in the belief that he would not be
rid of it, he called Lisbeth and Olwen, to whom both he pronounced his
will.

"The Thornton East property I give you," he said. "Number seven for
Lissi and eight for Olwen as she is. It will be pleasant to be next
door, and Lissi is not likely to marry at her age which is advanced.
Share and share alike of the furniture, and what's left sell with the
house and haff the proceeds. If you don't fall out in the sharing, you
never will again."

At once Lisbeth and Olwen embraced.

"My sister is my best friend," was the testimony of the elder; "we
shan't go astray if we follow the example of the dad and mother," was
that of the younger.

"Take two or three excursion trains to Aberporth for the holidays," said
Adam, "and get a little gravel for the mother's grave in Beulah. And a
cheap artificial wreath. They last better than real ones. It was in
Beulah that me and your mother learnt about Jesus."

Together Olwen and Lisbeth pledged that they would attend their father's
behests: shunning ill-will and continually petitioning to be translated
to the Kingdom of God; "but," Lisbeth laughed falsely, "you are not
going to die. The summer will do wonders for you."

"You are as right as a top really," cried Olwen.

Beholding that his state was the main concern of his children, Adam
counted himself blessed; knowing of a surety that the designs of God
stand fast against prayer and physic, he said: "I am shivery all over."

A fire was kindled and coals piled upon it that it was scarce to be
borne, and three blankets were spread over those which were on his bed,
and three earthen bottles which held heated water were put in his bed;
and yet the old man got no warmth.

"I'll manage now alone," said Lisbeth on the Saturday morning. "You'll
have Jennie and her young gentleman home for Sunday. Should he turn for
the worse I'll send for you."

Olwen left, and in the afternoon came Jennie and Charlie from the
drapery shop in which they were engaged; and sighing and sobbing she
related to them her father's will.

"If I was you, ma," Jennie counseled, "I wouldn't leave him too much
alone with Aunt Liz. You never can tell. Funny things may happen."

"I'd trust Aunt Liz anywhere," Olwen declared, loath to have her sister
charged with unfaithfulness.

"What do you think, Charlie?" asked Jennie.

The young man stiffened his slender body and inclined his pale face and
rubbed his nape, and he proclaimed that there was no discourse of which
the meaning was hidden from him and no device with which he was not
familiar; and he answered: "I would stick on the spot."

That night Olwen made her customary address to God, and before she came
up from her knees or uncovered her eyes, she extolled to God the acts
of her father Adam. But slumber kept from her because of that which
Jennie had spoken; and diffiding the humor of her heart, she said to
herself: "Liz must have a chance of going on with some work." At that
she slept; and early in the day she was in Cartref.

"Jennie and Charlie insist you rest," she told Lisbeth. "She can manage
quite nicely, and there's Charlie which is a help. So should any one who
is twenty-three."

For a week the daughters waited on their father and contrived they never
so wittily to free him from his disorder--Did they not strip and press
against him?--they could not deliver him from the wind of dead men's
feet. They stitched black cloth into garments and while they stitched
they mumbled the doleful hymns of Sion. Two yellow plates were fixed on
Adam's coffin--this was in accordance with the man's request--and the
engraving on one was in the Welsh tongue, and on the other in the
English tongue, and the reason was this: that the angel who lifts the
lid--be he of the English or of the Welsh--shall know immediately that
the dead is of the people chosen to have the first seats in the Mansion.

The sisters removed from Cartref such things as pleased them; Lisbeth
chose more than Olwen, for her house was bare; and in the choosing each
gave in to the other, and neither harbored a mean thought.

With her chattels and her sewing machine, Lisbeth entered number seven,
which is in Park Villas, and separated from the railway by a wood
paling, and from then on the sisters lived by the rare fruits of their
joint industry; and never, except on the Sabbath, did they shed their
thimbles or the narrow bright scissors which hung from their waists.
Some of the poor middle-class folk near-by brought to them their
measures of materials, and the more honorable folk who dwelt in the
avenues beyond Upper Richmond Road crossed the steep railway bridge
with blouses and skirts to be reformed.

"We might be selling Cartref now," said Olwen presently.

"I leave it to you," Lisbeth remarked.

"And I leave it to you. It's as much yours as mine."

"Suppose we consult Charlie?"

"He's a man, and he'll do the best he can."

"Yes, he's very cute is Charlie."

Charlie gave an ear unto Olwen, and he replied: "You been done in. It's
disgraceful how's she's took everything that were best."

"She had nothing to go on with," said Olwen. "And it will come back. It
will be all Jennie's."

"What guarantee have you of that? That's my question. What guarantee?"

Olwen was silent. She was not wishful of disparaging her sister or of
squabbling with Charlie.

"Well," said Charlie, "I must have an entirely free hand. Give it an
agent if you prefer. They're a lively lot."

He went about over-praising Cartref. "With the sticks and they're not
rubbish," he swore, "it's worth five hundred. Three-fifty will buy the
lot."

A certain man said to him: "I'll give you two-twenty"; and Charlie
replied: "Nothing doing."

Twelve months he was in selling the house, and for the damage which in
the meanseason had been done to it by a bomb and by fire and water the
sum of money that he received was one hundred and fifty pounds.

Lisbeth had her share, and Olwen had her share, and each applauded
Charlie, Lisbeth assuring him: "You'll never regret it"; and this is how
Charlie applauded himself: "No one else could have got so much."

"The house and cash will be a nice egg-nest for Jennie," Olwen
announced.

"And number seven and mine will make it more," added Lisbeth.

"It's a great comfort that she'll never want a roof over her," said
Olwen.

Mindful of their vows to their father, the sisters lived at peace and
held their peace in the presence of their prattling neighbors. On
Sundays, togged in black gowns on which were ornaments of jet, they
worshiped in the Congregational Chapel; and as they stood up in their
pew, you saw that Olwen was as the tall trunk of a tree at whose
shoulders are the stumps of chopped branches, and that Lisbeth's body
was as a billhook. Once they journeyed to Aberporth and they laid a
wreath of wax flowers and a thick layer of gravel on their mother's
grave. They tore a gap in the wall which divided their little gardens,
and their feet, so often did one visit the other, trod a path from
backdoor to backdoor.

Nor was their love confused in the joy that each had in Jennie, for
whom sacrifices were made and treasures hoarded.

But Jennie was discontented, puling for what she could not have,
mourning her lowly fortune, deploring her spinsterhood.

"Bert and me are getting married Christmas," she said on a day.

"Hadn't you better wait a while," said Olwen. "You're young."

"We talked of that. Charlie is getting on. He's thirty-eight, or will be
in January. We'll keep on in the shop and have sleep-out vouchers and
come here week-ends."

As the manner is, the mother wept.

"You've nothing to worry about," Lisbeth assuaged her sister. "He's
steady and respectable. We must see that she does it in style. You look
after the other arrangements and I'll see to her clothes."

She walked through wind and rain and sewed by day and night, without
heed of the numbness which was creeping into her limbs; and on the floor
of a box she put six jugs which had been owned by the Welshwoman who
was Adam's grandmother, and over the jugs she arrayed the clothes she
had made, and over all she put a piece of paper on which she had
written, "To my darling niece from her Aunt Lisbeth."

Jennie examined her aunt's handiwork and was exceedingly wrathful.

"I shan't wear them," she cried. "She might have spoken to me before she
started. After all, it's my wedding. Not hers. Pwf! I can buy better
jugs in the six-pence-apenny bazaar."

"Aunt Liz will alter them," Olwen began.

"I agree with her," said Charlie. "Aunt Liz should be more considerate
seeing what I have done for her. But for me she wouldn't have any money
at all."

Charlie and Jennie stirred their rage and gave utterance to the harshest
sayings they could devise about Lisbeth; "and I don't care if she's
listening outside the door," said Charlie; "and you can tell her it's
me speaking," said Jennie.

Throughout Saturday and Sunday Jennie pouted and dealt rudely and
uncivilly with her mother; and on Monday, at the hour she was preparing
to depart, Olwen relented and gave her twenty pounds, wherefore on the
wedding day Lisbeth was astonished.

"Why aren't you wearing my presents?" she asked.

"That's it," Jennie shouted. "Don't you forget to throw cold water, will
you? It wouldn't be you if you did. I don't want to. See? And if you
don't like it, lump it."

Olwen calmed her sister, whispering: "She's excited. Don't take notice."

At the quickening of the second dawn after Christmas, Jennie and Bert
arose, and Jennie having hidden her wedding-ring, they two went about
their business; and when at noon Olwen proceeded to number seven, she
found that Lisbeth had been taken sick of the palsy and was fallen upon
the floor. Lisbeth was never well again, and what time she understood
all that Olwen had done for her, she melted into tears.

"I should have gone but for you," she averred. "The money's Jennie's,
which is the same as I had it and under the mattress, and the house is
Jennie's."

"She's fortunate," returned Olwen. "She'll never want for ten shillings
a week which it will fetch. You are kind indeed."

"Don't neglect them for me," Lisbeth urged. "I'll be quite happy if you
drop in occasionally."

"Are you not my sister?" Olwen cried. "I'm having a bed for you in our
front sitting-room. You won't be lonely."

Winter, spring, and summer passed, and the murmurs of Jennie and Charlie
against Lisbeth were grown into a horrid clamor.

"Hush, she'll hear you," Olwen always implored. "It won't be for much
longer. The doctor says she may go any minute."

"Or last ages," said Charlie.

"Jennie will have the house and the money," Olwen pleaded. "And the
money hasn't been touched. Same as you gave it to her. She showed it to
me under the mattress. Not every one have two houses."

"By then you will have bought it over and over again," said Charlie.
"Doesn't give Jennie and me much chance of saving, does it?"

"And she can't eat this and can't eat that," Jennie screamed. "She
won't, she means."

Weekly was Olwen harassed with new disputes, and she rued that she had
said: "I'll have a bed for you in our front sitting-room"; and as it
falls out in family quarrels, she sided with her daughter and her
daughter's husband.

So the love of the sisters became forced and strained, each speaking and
answering with an ill-favored mouth; it was no longer entire and
nothing that was professed united it together.

"I must make my will now," Lisbeth hinted darkly.

"Perhaps Charlie will oblige you," replied Olwen.

"Charlie! You make me smile. Why, he can't keep a wife."

"I thought you had settled all that," Olwen faltered.

"Did you? Anyway, I'll have it in black and white. The minister will do
it."

After the minister was gone away, Lisbeth said: "I couldn't very well
approach him. He's worried about money for the new vestry. Why didn't
you tell me about the new vestry? It was in the magazine."

Olwen mused and from her musings came this: "It'll be a pity to spoil it
now. For Jennie's sake."

She got very soft pillows and clean bed-clothes for Lisbeth and she
placed toothsome dishes before Lisbeth; and it was Lisbeth's way to
probe with a fork all the dishes that Olwen had made and to say "It's
badly burnt," or "You didn't give much for this," or "Of course you were
never taught to cook."

For three years Olwen endured her sister's taunts and the storms of her
daughter and her son-in-law; and then Jennie said: "I'm going to have a
baby." If she was glad and feared to hear this, how much greater was her
joy and how much heavier was her anxiety as Jennie's space grew
narrower? She left over going to the aid of Lisbeth, from whom she took
away the pillows and for whom she did not provide any more toothsome
dishes; she did not go to her aid howsoever frantic the beatings on the
wall or fierce the outcry. Never has a sentry kept a closer look-out
than Olwen for Jennie. Albeit Jennie died, and as Olwen looked at the
hair which was faded from the hue of daffodils into that of tow and at
the face the cream of the skin of which was now like clay, she hated
Lisbeth with the excess that she had loved her.

"My dear child shall go to Heaven like a Princess," she said; and she
sat at her work table to fashion a robe of fine cambric and lace for her
dead.

Disturbed by the noise of the machine, Lisbeth wailed: "You let me
starve but won't let me sleep. Why doesn't any one help me? I'll get the
fever. What have I done?"

Olwen moved to the doorway of the room, her body filling the frame
thereof, her scissors hanging at her side.

"You are wrong, sister, to starve me," Lisbeth said. "To starve me. I
cannot walk you know. You must not blame me if I change my mind about my
money. It was wrong of you."

Olwen did not answer.

"Dear me," Lisbeth cried, "supposing our father in Heaven knew how you
treat me. Indeed the vestry shall have my bit. I might be a pig in a
pigsty. I'll get the fever. Supposing our father is looking through the
window of Heaven at your cruelty to me."

Olwen muttered the burden of her care: "'The wife would pull through if
she had plenty of attention. How could she with her about? The two of
you killed her. You did. I warned you to give up everything and see to
her. But you neglected her.' That's what Charlie will say. Hoo-hoo.
'It's unheard of for a woman to die before childbirth. Serves you right
if I have an inquest.'..."

"For shame to keep from me now," said Lisbeth in a voice that was higher
than the continued muttering of Olwen. "Have you no regard for the
living? The dead is dead. And you made too much of Jennie. You spoiled
her...."

On a sudden Olwen ceased, and she strode up to the bed and thrust her
scissors into Lisbeth's breast.




II

ACCORDING TO THE PATTERN


On the eve of a Communion Sunday Simon Idiot espied Dull Anna washing
her feet in the spume on the shore; he came out of his hiding-place and
spoke jestingly to Anna and enticed her into Blind Cave, where he had
sport with her. In the ninth year of her child, whom she had called
Abel, Anna stretched out her tongue at the schoolmaster and took her son
to the man who farmed Deinol.

"Brought have I your scarecrow," she said. "Give you to me the brown
pennies that you will pay for him."

From dawn to sunset Abel stood on a hedge, waving his arms, shouting,
and mimicking the sound of gunning. Weary of his work he vowed a vow
that he would not keep on at it. He walked to Morfa and into his
mother's cottage; his mother listened to him, then she took a stick and
beat him until he could not rest nor move with ease.

"Break him in like a frisky colt, little man bach,"[1] said Anna to the
farmer. "Know you he is the son of Satan. Have I not told how the Bad
Man came to me in my sound sleep and was naughty with me?"

[Footnote 1: Dear little man. "Bach" is the Welsh masculine for "dear";
"fach" the Welsh feminine for "dear."]

But the farmer had compassion on Abel and dealt with him kindly, and
when Abel married he let him live in Tybach--the mud-walled,
straw-thatched, two-roomed house which is midway on the hill that goes
down from Synod Inn into Morfa--and he let him farm six acres of land.

The young man and his bride so labored that the people thereabout were
confounded; they stirred earlier and lay down later than any honest
folk; and they took more eggs and tubs of butter to market than even
Deinol, and their pigs fattened wondrously quick.

Twelve years did they live thus wise. For the woman these were years of
toil and child-bearing; after she had borne seven daughters, her sap
husked and dried up.

Now the spell of Abel's mourning was one of ill-fortune for Deinol, the
master of which was grown careless: hay rotted before it was gathered
and corn before it was reaped; potatoes were smitten by a blight, a
disease fell upon two cart-horses, and a heifer was drowned in the sea.
Then the farmer felt embittered, and by day and night he drank himself
drunk in the inns of Morfa.

Because he wanted Deinol, Abel brightened himself up: he wore whipcord
leggings over his short legs, and a preacher's coat over his long trunk,
a white and red patterned celluloid collar about his neck, and a bowler
hat on the back of his head; and his side-whiskers were trimmed in the
shape of a spade. He had joy of many widows and spinsters, to each of
whom he said: "There's a grief-livener you are," and all of whom he gave
over on hearing of the widow of Drefach. Her he married, and with the
money he got with her, and the money he borrowed, he bought Deinol. Soon
he was freed from the hands of his lender. He had eight horses and
twelve cows, and he had oxen and heifers, and pigs and hens, and he had
twenty-five sheep grazing on his moorland. As his birth and poverty had
caused him to be scorned, so now his gains caused him to be respected.
The preacher of Capel Dissenters in Morfa saluted him on the tramping
road and in shop, and brought him down from the gallery to the Big Seat.
Even if Abel had land, money, and honor, his vessel of contentment was
not filled until his wife went into her deathbed and gave him a son.

"Indeed me," he cried, "Benshamin his name shall be. The Large Maker
gives and a One He is for taking away."

He composed a prayer of thankfulness and of sorrow; and this prayer he
recited to the congregation which gathered at the graveside of the woman
from Drefach.

Benshamin grew up in the way of Capel Dissenters. He slept with his
father and ate apart from his sisters, for his mien was lofty. At the
age of seven he knew every question and answer in the book "Mother's
Gift," with sayings from which he scourged sinners; and at the age of
eight he delivered from memory the Book of Job at the Seiet; at that age
also he was put among the elders in the Sabbath School.

He advanced, waxing great in religion. On the nights of the Saying and
Searching of the Word he was with the cunningest men, disputing with the
preacher, stressing his arguments with his fingers, and proving his
learning with phrases from the sermons of the saintly Shones Talysarn.

If one asked him: "What are you going, Ben Abel Deinol?" he always
answered: "The errander of the White Gospel fach."

His father communed with the preacher, who said: "Pity quite sinful if
the boy is not in the pulpit."

"Like that do I think as well too," replied Abel. "Eloquent he is. Grand
he is spouting prayers at his bed. Weep do I."

Neighbors neglected their fields and barnyards to hear the lad's
shoutings to God. Once Ben opened his eyes and rebuked those who were
outside his room.

"Shamed you are, not for certain," he said to them. "Come in, boys
Capel. Right you hear the Gospel fach. Youngish am I but old is my
courtship of King Jesus who died on the tree for scamps of parsons."

He shut his eyes and sang of blood, wood, white shirts, and thorns; of
the throng that would arise from the burial-ground, in which there were
more graves than molehills in the shire. He cried against the heathenism
of the Church, the wickedness of Church tithes, and against ungodly
book-prayers and short sermons.

Early Ben entered College Carmarthen, where his piety--which was an
adage--was above that of any student. Of him this was said: "'White
Jesus bach is as plain on his lips as the purse of a big bull.'"

Brightness fell upon him. He had a name for the tearfulness and splendor
of his eloquence. He could conduct himself fancifully: now he was
Pharaoh wincing under the plagues, now he was the Prodigal Son longing
to eat at the pigs' trough, now he was the Widow of Nain rejoicing at
the recovery of her son, now he was a parson in Nineveh squirming under
the prophecy of Jonah; and his hearers winced or longed, rejoiced or
squirmed. Congregations sought him to preach in their pulpits, and he
chose such as offered the highest reward, pledging the richest men for
his wage and the cost of his entertainment and journey. But Ben would
rule over no chapel. "I wait for the call from above," he said.

His term at Carmarthen at an end, he came to Deinol. His father met him
in a doleful manner.

"An old boy very cruel is the Parson," Abel whined. "Has he not strained
Gwen for his tithes? Auction her he did and bought her himself for three
pounds and half a pound."

Ben answered: "Go now and say the next Saturday Benshamin Lloyd will
give mouthings on tithes in Capel Dissenters."