A Visit from More Than One Relation

Had I known, before beginning to write this autobiography, it would swell to such a size, I am doubtful whether I would have undertaken the task at all. Behold me, at the end of twenty one chapters—some of them long and lean—only, as it were, just sharpening my pencil for a start. I have said so many things, of all sorts, that I do not remember whether I have previously described what I feel when writing every chapter, almost; namely that there is here too great an abundance of the “I,” “my mother,” and ‘my brother,’ of “said she,” “said I,” and “said he,” which, if the work were published, would doubtless pall upon the reader. But what help have I? Having begun the work, I am not very willing to leave it unfinished, especially since I have not touched upon some of the principal events of my life.

Without flattery or false-modesty, the truth is, my brother Bob was a hero in the eyes of the Red Fields’ workmen. Although in language, manners and habits he differed from most of them, yet I am perfectly certain that did they go to choose a king from their midst, Bob would have been elected monarch. It is a fact worthy of note that superior intelligence, and purity of speech and conduct will, sooner or later, win the admiration of even the most reckless and ungodly. Bob, since he was thirteen years of age, had been at work in the Red Fields colliery, and never an ear heard oath descend his lips. His fellow-workmen speedily got to know he was a reader, and, when meal time came round, he would be applied to for the news. He had an excellent memory and a fluent tongue, and while yet a mere lad he made glad the heart of many older than he, by the light of the Davy lamp deep down in the bowels of the earth. When he grew up to manhood he found himself one of the leaders of his fellow-workmen; and although, any more than someone else, he could not control a fierce crowd of colliers, still he was generally looked upon as their adviser. During the period of Abraham Jones’s stewardship, it was to Bob he gave charge of the work in his absence. No wonder, therefore, that when Abraham regained office, my brother’s former companions should look forward with interest to the time of his release from prison. Although it was only a few days since I had begun to “work” with Abel Hughes in his shop, the old man kindly gave me a holiday in order that I might greet my brother on his return home. He was expected by the mid-day train; and, from early morning, mother, nervous and agitated, busied herself cleaning the house and preparing a hearty reception for him.

“I have been a good while trying to make out,” she said, “what we shall get the boy to eat when he comes. They tell me that too heavy a meal for one who has just left jail will make him ill. Now I think of it, Bob used to be wonderful fond of currant cake; and, so that he might have some delicacy which won’t weigh too heavy on his stomach, perhaps a cup of tea and some cake would be just the thing. If you’ll run to the shop for three penn’orth of the best flour, a ha’porth of carbonate of soda, and a quarter of a pound of currants, I’ll be no time making it.”

I was most ready to do my share of the work, my disposition, like Bob’s, being somewhat favourable to the griddle. The tea things were on the table, the cake had been baked, the kettle had boiled and got cold again, many times over, long before the train was due. And I was at the railway station at least half an hour too early, Will Bryan, fair play for him, being there even before me. Very speedily, scores of stalwart colliers lined the platform, all with spirits and voices high. Some chucked me familiarly under the chin, others pulled my hair and ears— with the best intentions of course—while others gave me pennies. I preferred the last. Will Bryan looked almost enviously upon my store, but did not ask me for any of it, as he did on the previous occasion, when I thought he meant to fee a lawyer to defend Bob. This time he seemed puzzling himself to know what he should tell me to do with the money.

“It’s a great pity Bob doesn’t smoke,” he observed. “That brass of yours would have done nicely to buy him a tobacco-box.”

With his failure to suggest anything else, I had half a mind to condole. One remark he made I remember well.

“A collier who is taken to jail,” he said, “has this advantage, that they can’t give him the county crop. I’ll defy ’em to cut his hair any shorter than it is already.”

A great many other observations did Will let drop, which I considered at the time to be the essence of wisdom. The crowd of colliers who had come to meet Bob grew very large. I was surprised at the absence from their midst of Bob’s greatest friend, John Powell. While I was thinking what a disappointment it would be to Bob not to find his old companion there to welcome him, I heard the train approach. My heart began beating rapidly; Will Bryan made his mouth into a circle and went imitating the engine. The bell rang, and the train came in sight at a speed which I thought would make it impossible to pull up. Pull up, however, it did. With the noise of the steam which the engine let off, the throwing of coal on the fire, the banging of boxes upon the platform, the opening and slamming of doors, the rushing hither and thither of passengers and other people, and the talk and chatter they made, the place became one wild scene of noise and confusion. I looked in every direction for Bob.

“All right,” shouted someone, and away went the train once more.

The colliers stared at each other with disappointment in their looks. Will Bryan, running up to me, said, “A mare’s nest. Bob has not come.”

My spirit sank within me, and hardly could I control my feelings. ‘The colliers tried to console me with the assurance that Bob would arrive by next train, due three hours later. I went home crestfallen. Long before reaching the house, I saw mother in the doorway expecting us. On seeing me alone, she fled inside. Her disappointment was sore. I told her the colliers were certain he would come by next train. The cake was left unbroken and the kettle, which had boiled dry, was refilled. I went to meet the train a second time, and found a greater crowd of workmen than before. I had a presentiment Bob would not come by that train either. It turned out to be true. By this time my own disappointment had lost its smart at thought of the blow it would be to mother, whose heart-strings had been strained to such a pitch of tension that I fancied they must break at this fresh news. Nearing the house, I saw that she was not, as on the previous occasion, standing in the doorway. On entering, I found she was not so much cast down as I had anticipated.

“I knew he would not come; something told me so,” she said, before I had time to speak a word. “The furnace is not seven times heated, even yet, it would seem. I know something has happened to him;” and burying her face in her apron, she burst into tears.

I followed her example, and both of us presently felt better. I do not remember that we ate a single morsel. Mother did not care whether I went to meet the last train or not; but go I did. On the platform this time were a number of the Red Fields workmen who had been engaged in the pit during the day. They appeared fresh washed, their faces being clean, with the exception of a little shading about the corners and lids of the eyes. I noticed, also, that great numbers of those who had not been to work that day were half drunk. The train came, but without bringing Bob; whereupon the last-named section began cursing it, and almost everything else, but especially the two justices, Mr. Brown and the owner of the Hall. Will Bryan tried to persuade me to wait a while before returning home, there being signs, he said, of a row worth the seeing among the colliers. Finding his words were of no avail, at a great personal sacrifice, he returned with me. Will was always in his element in a row. Wherever there was a disturbance, there also, if it were possible, was Will. At Soldier Robin’s school it was his whole delight to set the boys a-fighting. In connection with the chapel, again, he a thousand times preferred accounts of a wrangling teachers’ meeting to listening to a good sermon. Ever since he began to part his hair and “make a Q.P,” mother was very much prejudiced against him, and was always putting me on my guard lest he should corrupt me. Will understood this very well, and, whenever he visited our house, he always took care to pull his hair down over his forehead before coming in. This had an excellent effect on mother, and I think would have uprooted her prejudices had she not accidentally, in looking through the window one day, caught Will going through this preliminary. She reproved him severely for his hypocrisy.

But, after all, as I have previously intimated, Will understood my mother perfectly, and’ managed her with remarkable skill. When it served his purpose he could, in his own way, talk as religiously as herself, almost. I do not think she was displeased to see Will coming home with me that night. She had had a neighbour or two in to cheer her, and so, doubtless, believed that Will was some sort of a support to me. When we entered, we were both struck with her calmness.

“The old woman keeps up like a brick,” said Will in my ear.

“I see,” observed my mother, “it is bad news you have again. But its only what I expected. Something has happened to him or he would have been home before now.”

“Don’t be down-hearted, Mary Lewis,” said Will. ‘I believe Bob will turn up from somewhere, just directly.”

“You’ye no foundation for that belief, William,” returned my mother. “To-night, look you, I’m made to feel the words of the wise man coming home to me: ‘Hope deferred maketh the heart sick.’ And then Job, when he was in trouble, said, ‘Thou washest away the things which grow out of the dust of the earth, and thou destroyest the hope of man.’ ‘Where is now my hope?’ ‘As for my hope, who shall see it?’”

“Well, but didn’t the preacher say the other Sunday, Mary Lewis,” asked Will, “that it came right with Job in the end, after all the humbugging he got, didn’t he?”

“He did, William,” replied mother; “and were I as trustful in my Redeemer as Job was, it would come all right with me too, look you.”

“It’s sure to come all right with you, Mary Lewis. You’re as pious as Job was, I’ll take my oath of it,” observed Will.

“Don’t presume and blaspheme, William,” commanded my mother.

“I’m telling the truth, from my heart,” returned Will. ‘You’re as pious as Job was, any day he got out of bed. And, according to the way the preacher gave his history, I see you both very much like each other. Job had a bad wife and you’ve had a bad husband, and you’ye both stuck to your colours, first class; so I’m sure the Lord’ll not be shabby in your case, in the end, either; you shall see if He will.”

“I beg of you not to say any more, Will,” said mother. “You ought to know I’m in no humour, to-night, to listen to any nonsense from you.”

“Nonsense!” cried Will, honestly indignant, I am sure. ‘It is no nonsense at all. I’ll bet you—that is, I’ll take my oath—it’ll be all right with you in the end. Didn’t the preacher tell us about Job that the Lord was only trying him? So is He doing with you. He only just wants to show the kind of stuff there’s in you.”

“William,” said mother, for the sake of turning the conversation, “were there many colliers at the railway?” (“Railway” was mother’s name for the station.)

“Thousands upon thousands,” replied Will.

“There you are again,” observed mother. “There’s only three hundred altogether in the Red Fields pit.”

“Well, yes, in a manner of speaking, you know, Mary Lewis,” rejoined Will. “I’m sure there was near a hundred there.”

“Didn’t one of you happen to speak to John Powell? What did he think about Bob’s not coming?” mother asked.

“John Powell wasn’t there,” we both replied.

“Not there! John Powell not there!’ exclaimed mother, in surprise.

“He was working the day shift,” obesrved Will.

“Who told you that, William?” asked mother.

“No one; I only thought it,” was Will’s answer.

Mother fell to pleating her apron and musing. Presently she said,—

“William, you wouldn’t be long running as far as John Powell’s house and telling him, if he is in, I’d like to see him.”

“No sooner said than done,” said Will, jumping to his feet.

“It is very dark, William,” observed my mother, following him to the door; “and it is almost too much to ask you to return, Rhys’ll come with you to learn something from John Powell, so as to let you go home.”

“Stand at ease, as you were!” cried Will in English. “If the darkness is very thick, I’ll cut through it with my knife.” And off he went.

“There is something very lovable and decent about that boy,” mother remarked. “I can’t, for the life of me, help liking him; only I’d like him better if he was a little more serious and spoke less English. I often fear he’ll make you like himself; and yet I do not think there is guile in his heart. Why didn’t you tell me John Powell wasn’t at the railway?”

Although the time seemed long, Will speedily returned with the news that John Powell was not at home, neither had he been home during the day; on hearing which, mother fell once more into a deep study, so deep that she took no notice of what Will told me, almost in a whisper:—

“I called to tell the gaffer yonder I was going to stay with you to-night. We have lost some splendid sport. The colliers have been burning straw effigies of Mr. Brown and the owner of the Hall, and capital ones they were, too. There’s been three battles, and One-eyed Ned has been taken to the round house, although he fought like a lion with the p’liceman.”

Will rattled along with his story, but I was not in the humour to listen, and I have no inclination to repeat it here. Seeing me not interested he ceased, and, next minute was fast asleep, his heavy breathing filling the house and rousing mother from her reverie.

“William,” she said, “it’s time you should go home, my son.”

“Not going home to-night; told the gaffer so,” replied Will, who fell asleep again directly. Mother recommenced her apron-pleating, and looked thoughtfully into the fire.

I loved the silence. I don’t know whether there is another like me, but I am thinking that my habit of spending hours at a stretch in the quiet of the night staring into the fire, with thousands of things which never had an existence and will never come to pass, running through my mind, is a legacy left me by my mother. Spite of every attempt to shake it off, it has clung to me to this day. Some nights I live an age in a few hours. Among other things, I have seen myself married to someone whose name I do not know. Our children fill the house with their clatter, they grow up and are sent to school, I try and train them as best I can, they give me all sorts of trouble, they leave home; at last their mother dies and I, a white-headed old man, am deserted of all save my crutches. I am cold and, the clock striking one, I spring to my feet with the remark that these are but vain imaginations, and I myself but a shivering old bachelor. I then run off to bed; but before closing my eyelids, I make a resolve that never again will I give my fancy rein, it being unprofitable, if not actually sinful, soto do. Next night I read till I am tired, and then say to myself, “Rhys, you had better, before going to bed, think over one or two matters, just for five minutes.” No sooner do I say so, than I begin building castles in the air once more; I imagine great numbers of things, and fancy myself in one situation and the other for an hour, two hours, sometimes three! Away with such a practice! And yet I love it. Like the man who is a slave to strong drink, I hate the failing from the bottom of my heart, at the same time that I find the greatest pleasure in it, and am for ever resolving some day to shake it off.

But to return. As I have said, I loved the silence, to which neither Will’s breathing nor the fact that something often rose to his throat as if it would choke him, did more than add. Mother and I exchanged not a word, but, so I have since thought, our fancies, though unconsciously, travelled side by side, so completely were our minds absorbed by the self- same object. I know not how long we thus remained, but I remember well fancying, a score of times, that I heard someone walking up the court-yard towards the house, the footsteps dying away within a yard or two of the door. At times I felt certain they were Bob’s, and held my breath in expectation. All, however, ended in silence. So sweet were these fancies that, as soon as I had finished with one I began upon another, and had I not found Will suddenly waking and mother springing to her feet, I would not have known whether it was in fancy or in fact that I heard someone knocking at the door, Before Will had awoke from sleep and I from dreams, to welcome Bob, mother had opened the door. But what a disappointment! It was the man I detested with all my soul, whom I heard saying to mother:—

“Well, Mary, how do you do, this long time?”

He it was whom, when I first saw him, I called “the Irishman,” and who stopped me near the Hall Park on the night Seth died. It was strange that at every critical juncture of my early life this man was sure to appear. I would as soon see him as see the Devil. ‘Will perceived in an instant who he was, for he knew as much about him as I did, nearly, because, as intimated at the beginning of this history, I could conceal but little from my friend, who, on his part, never betrayed my confidence. Directly mother found out who our visitor was, she drew herself up, and I saw she had lost none of that pluck which she at all times showed when there was a real necessity for it. Standing before “the Irishman,” as I called him, in such a fashion that it was impossible he could enter the house, except by force, she said:—

“James, I have told you many times I never want to see your face again and that you are not to come into this house.”

Will played with the poker, and the Irishman thrust his head forward to see who was within.

“Isn’t that Hugh Bryan’s son?” he asked, looking at Will,

“Yes,” replied my mother.

“I thought so by his nose,” observed the Irishman.

“What do you see about my nose, you kill- pheasant, you?” asked Will, hotly.

“William, hold your tongue this minute, is best for you,” said mother,

I could read in the Irishman’s face that nothing would have given him greater pleasure than to wring Will Bryan’s neck, and that my mother knew, right well. Still toying with the poker and muttering his anger, Will said to me, softly, “Shall I give him a downer?” I had only to answer “yes,” and Will would have used the poker on the instant. I, however, told him to take care, for the Irishman was not a man to be trifled with. Will, maintaining his grip of the poker, fixed his eye upon that of the visitor as the chick does on the hawk which is about to swoop down upon it, but with this difference, that Will was not afraid of the onset. I knew from his look that had the Irishman laid a hand on mother, or tried to force his way into the house, Will would not have stayed to consult us as to what use he should put the poker. Mother and the Irishman. were, by this time, speaking so low that we could catch but very few words of what they said. I understood her to be exhorting him, earnestly and threateningly, to go away. I noticed him look towards Will, and heard him say to mother:—“Can he hold his tongue after to-night?’ I could not make out my mother’s answer, so softly was it given. All of a sudden the two ceased speaking, and I saw the Irishman peering in the direction of the yard and turning pale in the face. Still, he did not move from where he stood. A moment later we heard footsteps approaching the house. In that brief space I saw before me a guilty conscience which shook and paralysed its owner. Next minute, a hand was laid upon the intruder’s collar, he himself was hurled aside and a voice with which those walls had not resounded for two months past was heard saying:—

“Holloa, gamekeeper! what do you want here?”

I saw no more of the Irishman that night. Bob and John Powell walked in, shutting the door after them. I will not attempt to describe my mother’s joy and mine, because I should be ashamed to see it on paper. However paradoxical it might appear, the way in which we two testified our happiness was by a hearty cry. Thinking the matter over, I fancy Will’s method of exhibiting his feeling was much the more reasonable one. He walked, or rather danced, round the kitchen, whistling:—

and running the poker up and down his left arm as if it were a fiddle bow. Will had waltzed several times around before mother noticed the ungodliness taking place in her house. When she did, she soon put an end to his pranks.

To my comfort I could not see that his imprisonment had wrought any change in Bob’s appearance. His face wore the same calm thoughtfulness and determination it always wore, and there was nothing in his gait to indicate that he had lost a particle of his independent spirit. Hard labour was no new thing to him, and this, possibly may account for the fact. When mother came to herself, she viewed him over from crown to sole, and vowed that, like the youths of the captivity, he looked all the better for his hard fare. She then began an examination and enquiry. Upon her asking him how it was he did not come home by the mid-day train, John Powell made answer:—

“I am to blame for that. I got to learn that the workmen had determined to make a fuss and an exhibition of Bob, and knowing he would not like it, I went to meet him. I kept him back until everybody had gone away to bed. I am sure I shall catch it for what I’ve done.”

When Bob came to ask the news, I expected one of the first things mother would tell him was that I had been apprenticed to Abel Hughes. But I was disappointed, and I am not sorry for it. The recollection of her words is a great comfort to me at the present moment, for they show clearly where her thoughts were domiciled, and what those things were which brought her heart its greatest joy.

“The best news on earth I have to give you, Bob,” she said, “is that Thomas and Barbara Bartley have joined our church, and that there is every reason to believe them both to have been really converted.”

“And fine fun there was with them,” remarked Will.

“Don’t you talk of fun in Society, it’s best for you,” said mother. “The two were a trifle comical, as you might expect, Bob; but, to my mind, the ring of a call was there, plain enough. And I have been thinking a good deal, my dear boys,” she added, glancing around at us four, “of those words, ‘the last shall be first.’ It would be a hard thing, wouldn’t it, if Thomas and Barbara, for all their ignorance and drollery, were saved in the end, while we children of the kingdom, were cast into outer darkness?”

Mother spoke much more in the same strain. I never remember seeing Bob so attentive to what she said; and unless there was something the matter with my sight, I fancy his eyes filled with moisture more than once. Mother was so absorbed in her theme that she forgot, for a while, to offer my brother and his friend something to eat. But it turned out that both had been feasting it somewhere before coming home, and mother at last was considerate enough to place the currant cake before Will and myself. I say it with a clear conscience: if Will and I, under every subsequent circumstance, did our duty as well and thoroughly as we did it when the currant cake was brought face to face with us on this particular midnight, Will would not be where he now is, and I would be a much better minister of the Gospel than I am. Mother ordered Will and myself off to bed. I felt perfectly happy, and according to Will’s testimony, given the moment before he began to snore, the only trouble upon his mind was my refusal to allow him to give the Irishman “a downer.”