David's Little Lad — Reading Notes

Gwen had a beautiful voice, and I liked the old air, so I stayed my impatient question to listen.

"Maids are coy and oft deceitful, Derry derry dando, Few there are who love sincerely, Down a derry down. Say not so, I love thee dearly, Derry derry down down, Derry down down derry."

"None but thee torment and teaze me, Derry derry dando,"

I shouted in my impetuous manner, and leaving my seat, I went noisily to her side.

"Gwen, I _will_ be heard. I have not another soul to speak to, and you are so cross and disagreeable. What is it to be buried alive?"

"'Tis just like you, Gwladys," said Gwen, rising indignantly. "Just after two hours of it, when I was getting the darling precious lamb off to sleep, you've gone and awoke him. Dear, dear! good gracious! there never was such a maid!"

Gwen retired with the disturbed and wailing baby into the night nursery, and I was left alone.

"None but thee torment and teaze me, Derry derry dando,"

Then I returned to my seat on the window-sill, curled myself up tighter than ever, flattened my nose again against the pane, and began to think out my dismal thoughts.

Yes, my thoughts were undoubtedly dismal, and very melancholy must my eyes have looked, and absurdly long and drawn down the corners of my mouth. Had anybody been there to see, they must have pronounced me sentimental in the extreme; but no one was by, and--there was the rub-- that was the reason I looked so melancholy. Even Gwen, rocking baby to sleep, could be disturbed at least by my long drawn sighs, but Gwen had retired into the night nursery, out of reach of my despondency, and though I could hear her cheerful voice in the distance, she certainly could no longer hear me. I was utterly alone.

I pressed my face against the window pane, and gazed at the scene before me. It was a fair scene enough. A broad sweep of sea, the waves sparkling in the sunshine--some rugged rocks--a little patch of white sand; all this lay close. In the distance were some hills, magnificently clothed. To the right, I saw oak, ash, beech, in their autumn dress; to the left, yellow fields of corn, an orchard or two; some mowers were cutting down the corn, and laughing merrily; some children were eating apples in the orchards--over all a gentle breeze stirred, and the sun shone out of an almost cloudless sky.

Yes, the scene was very fair, but I did not appreciate it. My eyes had rested on those trees, and those hills, and that sea all my life--I was tired of the unvarying monotony. Nothing wearied me so much as when visitors came to stay with mother, visitors who did not know our country, and who consequently went into raptures over our Welsh scenery. I am quite sure now that the raptures were genuine, but at the time they seemed to me very like duty talk. I always listened contemptuously; I always answered carelessly, "Oh, yes, the place is well enough;" and I always thought bitterly in my heart of hearts.

It is easy for you, fine sir or madam, to speak and to admire, who need only stay in this place for a week or fortnight, but what if you had to live here _always_, from year's end to year's end. If you had to see the meadows, and orchards, and sea, and the old grey house, and the trees and sky--in short, all the fair landscape, not only in its summer glory, but in its winter desolation, would not the country then appear a little tiresome to you? Might you not then find an occasional visit to Cardiff, and an occasional ride across the fields, and a far from occasional stay at home, slightly wearying, and might it not possibly occur to you that yours was a dull life? For this was my fate. I had always lived at Tynycymmer. I had always seen the hills clothed with trees in the distance; I had always watched the ripening fruit in the orchards, and the ripening corn in the fields. In short, I was a Welsh girl who had never gone out of Wales in her life. Never had I even seen Gloucester, never had I set foot on English soil.

Circumstances too many to mention had conspired to thus isolate me. I had once paid a visit, when a little child, to North Wales, but all the rest of my sixteen years had been spent with mother, at Tynycymmer, in the county of Glamorganshire. A rich country, a rambling, romantic old home, a fair scene, where gentle care had tended me, this I acknowledged, but I also knew that I was tired, weary, sick of it all.

With my absurdly dismal face gazing outward, I repeated the question to myself, which nurse Gwen had refused to answer; "What is it to be buried alive?"

The question had arisen in my mind from a paragraph in a local paper, which I had seen to-day.

This paragraph was headed "_Buried alive_."

It contained an account of some colliers in a not very distant part of Glamorganshire, who had been killed in a mining accident, truly buried in their full health and strength by the sudden giving way of a column of coal.

I had read the paragraph aloud to mother and David at breakfast.

I had seen David's face flush and then grow pale, had heard mother say, "That place is not far from Ffynon; I am glad the accident did not happen in our mine, David."

"Thank God! and it might have been," from David.

"Things will mend in the old place soon, my son."

"I trust so," from David.

Then expressions of pity and sympathy from both pairs of lips, for the injured and killed.

In this sympathy I had freely joined, for I was not hard-hearted; then I had forgotten the circumstance. The widows and children in the dismal coal country might be weeping and mourning, but I, Gwladys Morgan, in my fair home, in this fair land, had no room for them in my selfish heart. In half an hour I had ceased to remember the paragraph in the _Hereford Times_, all but its heading. But the heading, as I said, haunted me; it had another meaning besides going down into the bowels of the earth, and finding its walls close round one, and feeling oneself shut into a living tomb. It had another meaning besides the palpable and material horror of slow starvation and of coming madness. Of these things I could form no conception, but I could conceive of other things, and feel them through and through my childish and inexperienced heart. I imagined another meaning to the words, and this meaning I hunted up and pondered over, with a deeper and deeper melancholy, adding strength to my gloom.

Having roused up the skeleton, I clothed it with flesh, I filled its veins with warm young blood, I made its limbs fair and round, I gave to its face the healthy hue of youth, I coloured its eyes blue, and its hair a golden brown, and I called it, when I had given it life and being, Gwladys Morgan.

I took this fair young person of my creation, and buried her in a living tomb; true, the fresh air of heaven still blew upon her, the sun shone over her head, and the flowers blossomed at her feet. She could walk through lovely gardens, she could watch the coming and going of the fresh tide, on the fresh ocean, she could repose at night in the softest of beds, in a spacious oak-lined room. She could receive counsel and love, from the kind and tender lips of mother and brother. All this she could have, but still she was in a tomb, and the name of the tomb was Tynycymmer. Her body was free, as far as the walls of her prison allowed it, to roam, but her mind, with its noble aspirations, her soul, which had conceived great and possible commissions of wide and ever-widening usefulness, these were shut up in a tomb; in short, this feeling, breathing creature, with her talents and her longings, was buried alive.

Having consigned Gwladys to this fate, I went on to imagine the result. She would struggle in vain for freedom, she would beat with her wings-- poor imprisoned bird--against her cage, she would pant and long for a less confined air, for emancipation from her living grave, she would suffer in uncomplaining silence, and then gradually, her mind would recoil upon itself, her aspiring soul would cease to struggle, and starved out with earth's hard fate, would soar to nobler worlds!--(here my tears began to drop).

But I had not done yet; I imagined still further, and in all its minutest details, the body's decay of this suffering creature. How thin and hollow, how pale and worn the once round and rosy cheeks would become! what a pathetic and far-away look of sad yearning would enter the blue eyes! how the curling hair would begin to grow!--I did not like the idea of the hair growing thin, it was not poetical--had not nurse Gwen a great bald division in her hair, a division clefting her raven locks asunder, deep and wide as a potato ridge? No, I substituted thin locks for grey, and so completed the picture.

Over my completed picture I should assuredly have wept, had not, at this opportune juncture, the blue eyes, which were certainly anything but dim as yet, descried, bowling smoothly along the road, and making swift advances to Tynycymmer, a little pony-carriage, driven by a pair of hands, very well fitted for their present task, that of keeping two spirited ponies in order. Into the long, winding avenue the carriage dashed, down the avenue it sped, and the next instant it had drawn up at the front entrance, and a large, strongly-made man was helping a delicate, stately woman to alight. The strong man was my brother, the woman was my mother.

Quick as lightning, I had left my seat in the nursery window, had wreathed my face with smiles, had filled my heart with laughter, had, for the time being, banished every trace of the ugly, bad dream in which I had been indulging, had descended the stairs almost like an arrow from its bow, had lifted mother bodily up the steps, and placed her amid my own and David's laughter, in the old oak arm-chair, the family heirloom, the undoubted gift of some old Arch-Druid ancestor, which stood in the wide entrance hall.

"Well! mother, what an age you've been away! Did you catch the first train this morning? Aren't you dreadfully tired? What was it like, was it glorious? Were there crowds of people? Did the Bishop preach? Is the music ringing in your ears? Doesn't your head ache? And oh! _did_ you get a new fashion for my blue silk gown?"

These questions I poured out, toppling them one over the other, down on my knees the while, removing mother's boots, and encasing her dear, pretty feet in a pair of warm, fur-lined slippers.

"I saw one or two nicely-dressed girls," began mother slowly, whereupon I suspended my operations with her feet, and looked up with a face of absorbed interest.

"And, Gwladys," said David, laying his hand on my shoulder, "you are to come to-morrow, the Messiah is to be sung, and I will take you over."

"Oh! oh! oh!" I exclaimed, beginning to dance about, but then observing that mother was gazing at me a little sadly, I stopped short, and exclaimed with a sudden burst of unselfishness--

"The pony-carriage only holds two; I don't want to take mother's place."

"No, my darling, I am tired, I should not care to go again to-morrow, and I want you to hear the Messiah."

"We must start even earlier than to-day, Gwladys," continued David, as he led the way to the supper-room. "We nearly missed the train this morning, and I have unfortunately failed to get reserved seats, but you don't mind a crowd?"

"I _love_ a crowd," I answered energetically; looking and feeling, as I spoke, a totally different creature from the sentimental being who had gazed with dismal eyes from the nursery window, half an hour before.

"What kind of voice had Madame Edith Wynne, mother, and did you hear Sims Reeves?"

"Sims Reeves did not sing to-day, but he will to-morrow in the Messiah," replied mother.

"And I shall be there to-morrow!" I exclaimed again, then a sudden thought darted through my brain, and I fell into a reverie.

In my great excitement and delight at the prospect of going to Hereford, to the festival of the Three Choirs, I had forgotten something which now returned to my memory with painful consciousness. I had nothing to wear. My blue silk, my beautiful navy blue, mother's last present, was still unmade, and my white dress was with the laundress. My white dress, though simple and childish, was new and tolerably fashionable, and in no other could I think of appearing before the great and gay world of Hereford, on this my first visit.

"Mother," I said, jumping from my seat, and upsetting a cup of hot tea over Gyp the terrier, "I must go this very moment to speak to Nancy at the lodge; she has got my frock, and she must iron it to-night."

Without waiting for a reply, I ran out of the room, and bonnetless and hatless sped up the avenue. The light autumn breeze tossed my curls into wild confusion, my gay voice rose, humming a merry Welsh air. Very far away now were my gloomy thoughts, very like a child I felt, as I walked on. My mind was fully occupied with my promised treat, my dreams were all rainbow tinted, my world all tinged with sunshine and glory. The only cloud that shadowed the gay expanse of my firmament was the possibility of my white dress not being ironed in time for me to wear.

DAVID, I AM TIRED OF TYNYCYMMER.

When I reached the lodge, Nancy, a stout, red-faced Welsh woman, came out to meet me, accompanied by a troupe of wild-looking children, who stood round and stared with open eyes and mouths, for Miss Morgan of Tynycymmer was a great person in their eyes.

"Is my white dress ready? Nancy; I want to wear it to-morrow morning early."

"Eh! dear, dear, Miss Gwladys," dropping a profound curtsey. "Eh! goodness me! yes, I'll h'iron it to-night, miss. Get out of that, Tum," addressing her sturdy-limbed son, who had placed himself between his mother and me.

"_I_ know what Tum wants," I said. "Here, Tum, Dai, Maggie, catch!"

I threw some halfpence amongst the children, and turned away.

As I did so, two ladies came out of the lodge; one, a handsome dark-eyed girl, a casual acquaintance of mine, came eagerly to my side.

"Now, Miss Morgan, I call this provoking; what right have you to go away, just when I want to know you!"

"What do you mean?" I asked, bluntly.

"You are going away from Tynycymmer?"

"Indeed we are not," I said.

"Well, but my mother heard it from--oh! I forgot," blushing deeply and looking confused. "I was not to say. Of course it is not the case, or you would know--just idle gossip; I am sorry I mentioned it, but so glad you are not going."

"Good-night," I said, holding out my hand.

I had retraced a few steps home, when my little friend ran after me.

"Please, please, Miss Morgan, you won't speak of this; I should get into trouble, indeed."

"Oh, dear, no!" I answered, lightly; "there is nothing to repeat. Make your mind easy."

The girl, satisfied, ran away, and I walked on.

But I was not so cool and unconcerned as she supposed her words had excited me, her words had aroused both discontent and hope. I forgot my certain pleasure of to-morrow, in the bare possibility of a greater and a wider pleasure, and as a moth round a candle, my thoughts fluttered round the magic words, "You are going away."

Could they be true? could the gossip the girl had heard be correct? How certain she looked! how startled and frightened, when she found herself mistaken. And, little fool! she had made me promise not to betray her, just too when I wanted to solve the mystery. Oh, if only she might be right! if only we might be going to leave this dull life, this stupid country existence! Could it be the case? gossip was often mistaken, but seldom utterly without foundation. I asked myself this question tremblingly and eagerly. Instantly I had a reply. Sober reason started to the forefront of all my faculties, and said--

"It is impossible; the girl has made a mistake; the gossip is false. How could you leave Tynycymmer? Is not David master here? does not the place belong to David, as it did to his father before him? and do not he and mother love every stone in the old house, every tree in the old ground? would not the idea, the most distant idea, of going away break their hearts?"

Yes, it was quite out of the question that mother and David could think of leaving Tynycymmer. But my little friend had said nothing about mother and David, she had only whispered the delicious and soul-stirring words, "_You_ are going away."

Perhaps I was going to school; perhaps some London cousins had asked me to pay them a visit. Oh! yes, this last thought must be right, and how pleasant, how lovely, how charming that would be! I should see the Houses of Parliament, and Westminster, and visit the Parks, and the Museums, and Madame Tussaud's.

Yes, certainly this was going to happen. Mother had not told me yet, which was a little strange, but perhaps she had heard it herself very suddenly, and had met some friends, and had mentioned it to them. Yes, this must be the mystery, this must be the fire from whence the smoke of Sybil's gossip came. I felt it tingling from my throat down to my very toes. I was _not_ going to be buried alive. So cruel a fate was not in store for me. I should see the world--the world of beauty, of romance, of love, and all possible things might happen to me. I skipped along gaily.

David was smoking his pipe, and pacing up and down under some trees which grew near the house. The short September sun had set, but the moon had got up, and in the little space of ground where my brother walked, it was shedding a white light, and bringing into relief his strongly marked features.

David's special characteristic was strength; he possessed strength of body, and strength of--mind, I was going to say, but I shall substitute the word soul. His rugged features, his height, his muscular hands and arms, all testified to his great physical powers. And the repose on his face, the calm gentleness and sweetness that shone in his keen, dark eyes, and played round his firm lips, showed how strong his soul must be--for David had known great trouble.

I mention his strength of character here, speaking of it first of all in introducing him into my story, for the simple reason that when I saw him standing under the trees, I perceived by the expression of his face, that he was yielding to a most unusual emotion; he looked anxious, even unhappy. This I took in with a kind of side thought, to be recurred to by and by, but at present I was too much excited about myself. I walked with him nearly every evening when he smoked, and now I went to my usual place, and put my hand through his arm. I longed to ask him if the surmise, which was agitating my whole being, was correct, but by doing this I should betray Sybil, and I must not even mention that I had seen her.

"What bright cheeks, and what a happy face!" said David, looking at me affectionately, "are you very glad to come to the Messiah with me? little woman."

"Yes," I answered absently, for to-morrow's treat had sunk into insignificance. Then out it came with a great irrepressible burst, "David, I am _longing_ to see London."