The First Time and the Last

“Now for the choker,” said Will; “if you are bound to go to that house. But, if I were you, I’d chuck up the idea; for, how much better will you be after going? I’ll inquire for the choker in two minutes, and, while you are decking yourself I’ll fetch Bob; because I mean to give to-day to the Queen.”

Will used to govern me as a lad. I felt myself in his hands once more, and under some sort of compulsion to wear a white neckerchief, and to carry out his other instructions. I was ready to submit to any plan, almost, in order to attain my object that morning, because I felt under vow to the one I loved most, and, if I lost this opportunity, I knew I should never forgive myself for it. I found that Will had borrowed a trap, so that, as he expressed it, he “shouldn’t be hailed.” Much as I had heard about Bob on the previous night, I was too deeply engrossed with the outcome of my adventure to take any very great notice of the animal when I got the advantage of seeing him by daylight. But I re-collect remarking that he was in good condition and that Will said he was called “Lazarus” by the “chaps.” Our plan was for Will to drive me to Gregg Street and leave me there to do my errand; then, at the end of half an hour, he was to fetch me to spend the day with him in any fashion I thought fit. But the way of man is not in himself. When we got within a hundred yards or so of the place at which we were taken prisoners the night before, Will pulled up his reins and said, in an excited tone, “I’ll take my oath! Here’s the very bobby who nabbed us last night, and he is motioning to us!” Such was the fact. Within the minute, the officer was at our side ordering us to stop. Will, like myself, was visibly agitated.

“Rhys Lewis,” said the man in blue; “come down.”

I obeyed, and, although I tried to appear bold, I felt myself tremble, and knew I was becoming pale in the face.

Will jumped down the same instant, observing, “I’ll follow you wherever it is, even if the concern was to go to Bryn Eglwys;” and he threw the reins on Bob’s back.

The officer smiled and said “don’t be alarmed. Do you know me, Rhys Lewis?

I shook my head.

“Bryan, do you know me?” he asked.

“To be sure,” replied Will. “Wasn’t it you who lent me a pair of cuffs last night?”

“Will,” said the officer, “don’t you remember getting the loan of a cane from me, more than once?”

After looking at him for a second or two Will exclaimed, “Well, may I never become a wooden bedstead if this isn’t Sergeant Williams! No wonder you turned out such a trump last night! And how are you, old A 1? Can’t you get leave of absence for to-day?”

“Perhaps I can, Mr. Bateson,” replied the officer.

Will, looking a bit sheepish, observed “True to nature, sergeant. The Welshman must have an alias—a bardic name, you know.”

“I didn’t know, before, that cabbies were noted as bards,” said the Sergeant.

“Hush!” returned Will. “Least said soonest mended. I I feel just as if I were at home. Here am I myself, Rhys Lewis and Sergeant Williams, and it only wants William the Coal, Duke, and that old thoroughbred Thomas Bartley to make us complete.”

At first, Sergeant Williams’s appearance gave me the greatest uneasiness, for my reminiscences of him were none of the most agreeable. But my fears were soon scattered. After a brief conversation, Will sprang into his trap and drove off. The Sergeant came with me to 65, Gregg Street, and knocked at the door, which was opened by a sturdy, masculine-looking woman. I saw at once that she and the Sergeant knew each other. Having told her my business, he left me. I was led by the woman to the room I had tried to see into on the previous night, and after she had announced “The Minister,” she too left me, shutting the door behind herself. Ever since awaking that morning, my heart had kept beating at a rapid rate. I felt that I had an unpleasant task to perform, and one which I could not shirk, even were the heavens to fall. Before me I saw him whom I had partly seen the night before, and similarly placed—sitting up in bed. Pulling myself together, as best I could, I gave him greeting, in English, almost directly on my entrance to the room, although a legion of thoughts had swarmed through my mind before I spoke and before he could answer. This was the first time I had seen the man’s face; but I carried in my breast a load of his history—a history which was anything but comforting.

When I asked him how he felt, he answered in the single word—“Bad.”

Asked whether he entertained any hope of recovery,he sorrowfully shook his head.

I questioned him concerning his thoughts and previsions, but could only get a shake of the head in reply.

I tried to lead his mind to God and His mercy to the chiefest of sinners, and to as many as I could remember of the promises of the Bible. But his only response was a head-shake, denoting profoundest misery and deepest despair.

After fairly exhausting myself in these directions, I, too, became silent. In thought I felt myself carried far back to a bedroom in the house of Thomas Bartley, where I heard my mother—up to the throat in death—enjoining me, again and again: “If ever you meet him, and who knows but you will, try and remember he is your father; try and forget his sins, and, if you can do him any good, do it!” Then would my mind revert to the night on which Seth died, when I met my uncle near the Hall Park; to the words with which he enlightened me as to the history of my family, and to the things which my brother Bob had, on the same night, softly and in the darkness of our room, told me concerning my father—his descent of the downward path, his extravagance and his cruelties towards mother. I remembered how I was obliged to stuff the bedsheets into my mouth lest I should cry out while Bob was telling me of mother, compelled to stay away from chapel because of blackened eyes, after a beating from my father. I remembered wondering how she could pray for him who had just struck her, and while her blood was yet undried upon her apron from the blow. O, how I hated the wretch then! How glad did I feel that I had never seen his face! But now I was at his side, I heard the words—not as an echo of the past, but as if they were being spoken for the first time by the same sweet lips: “If ever you meet him, and who knows but you will, try and remember he is your father; try and forget his sins, and, if you can do him any good, do it!” Yes, I was gazing upon him, my father! Hardly could I realise the fact. He, the once strong man lay before me a helpless heap; and there was no need of the aroma of whiskey which filled the room to assist me to a correct conclusion as to the means by which he had been brought to this pitiful state. My uncle and he had run their course almost neck and neck.

Should I reveal myself to him? Would that be wise? Would it serve any good purpose? Obviously, his life was near its close; and I had done all in my power to make him understand the seriousness of the situation. I had tried to set before him the graciousness of the Gospel, and how it bade the greatest sinner hope, to the last. I had reminded him of those who had been called at the eleventh hour, and of the thief on the Cross; but nothing 1 could say touched his feeling or kindled any sort of interest in him. I asked if I should pray with him; and he resolutely refused. What more could I do for him? I never saw a man with so wretched a look; and I trust I never shall again. He seemed as one who had taken leave of all comfort and hope, and was fast sinking into darkness, strange and unfathomable. My allusions to the promises of Scripture only made him take one more plunge into the depths. The verses I quoted, instead of consoling terrified him, as old acquaintances whom he dreaded to meet; and I noticed that, with what of strength remained to him, he tried to move farther away from me towards the wall. He sometimes seemed agitated, as if his heart were fired, for he would clutch at the bed clothes tightly. At other times he became quieter, as if he had started on a long journey down into himself and had forgotten that I was in the room. But he would presently return, and, alter looking wildly about him and seeing I was still there, would move uneasily towards the wall. I felt my presence was a burden to him, and that he was in a hurry for me to leave; because he held out his hand more than once towards the whiskey bottle on the little table by his side, withdrawing it again when he found I was looking at him.

By this time he took but little notice of anything I said and, fearing I could do him no good, I got up to go. But the words again recurred to me, “If ever you meet him,” &c., as if they had come from another world. Would I have done my best by him if I did not speak to him in Welsh, and tell him who I was? Would it not be something for him to know that my mother had forgiven him his inhuman conduct towards her, even were that the only forgiveness he ever tasted? I determined to reveal myself, and tried to pray that it would affect him for good.

“Robert Lewis,” I said to him, in Welsh; “do you know who is speaking to you?”

He started at the question and stared hard at me, as he had not done before. He fixed his eves on me—marvellously bright eyes, like two lamps lighting up his way to the darkness of despair, to be speedily quenched alter his passing. I divined that his mind was wandering back in search of some reminiscence of me; unsuccessfully, of course.

“I am your son, Rhys Lewis,” I went on. ‘Father, you will be glad to hear that my mother forgave you everything before she died.”

I repented a thousand times that the words ever escaped my lips. They were brief, but they pained him more than all I had said. If I had thrown a bucket of fire over him the effect could not have been more fearful. He writhed and twisted in the most indescribable torment. In a shriek of fury, and with a force of which I had not deemed him capable, he ordered me out of his sight.

“Go away! Go away!” he screamed, recoiling from me as if I were an adder, and pressing himself close against the wall, which he would have gone through, if he only could.

Alarmed by his howlings, the woman of the house rushed into the room and looked at me like a lioness. What, she asked me, furiously, had I done to the sick man? I feared she would have planted her nails in my face and, altogether too overcome to give her any explanation, I fled from the spot for very life. Recalling that sight, the words of the unclean spirits came often to my mind: ‘art thou come hither to torment us before the time?” and the words of Ellis Wynn of Glasynys—

The visit lasted only twenty minutes or so, but it forms the blackest spot in all my history. I admit I did not feel the anguish which would have been natural to a son who saw his father in such a condition, because I had never had any regard for the man. Horror is the fittest word to describe the sensation at my heart. The sight made me wretched, and the only comfort I could extract from it was that I had carried out, to the best of my ability, the last wishes of my mother.

The Sergeant and Will Bryan were expecting me at the appointed spot. I told them the result of my visit, and got a rebuke from Will for not having “chucked up the idea,” as he had advised. By this time I was in a hurry to return to Bala, the examination taking place in the following week, which would be the final one for me. I guessed the Sergeant had something to say to me, and guessed correctly.

“Rhys,” said he in an aside, “have you anything to conceal from Bryan?”

“Nothing,” I replied.

“Good,” he rejoined, adding aloud, “Well boys, where shall we go to?”

“am for returning to Bala at once,” I remarked.

“You don’t go from here to-day if I had to chain you by the leg, as William the Coal does with Duke,” declared Will.

But neither the Sergeant nor Will could prevail upon me to stay. Will told me there was no train for an hour and a half, and I took his word. He conducted the Sergeant and myself to an hotel where we could get something to eat or, as he expressed it, “a last blow out on account of yours truly.” I made but a very poor meal, being anxious to catch every word which fell from Sergeant Williams, of which I here present a summary.

“It is many years, Lewis,” said the Sergeant, “since I last saw you. That was on the night I came to your house to take your brother Bob into custody. I shall never forget that night as long as I live. I knew Bob to be innocent, and yet I was bound to arrest him. Bob and I were great friends, and I knew your mother very well. You remember, because I saw you running from the house, the two men who set upon us as we were leaving the court-yard. You know who they were. I made the other policeman promise to say nothing about the affair. Their object, as you know, was to give Bob a chance of escape, if he had only taken it. Next day, I met the owner of the Hall, as he was going to Church, and told him I was certain that Bob, John Powell and Morris Hughes were innocent, and that it was a mistake to have them locked up. He got into a bad way, swore at me, and called me a fool for interfering. I told him to hasten to Church to pray. From that very minute, I knew my doom was sealed. The old knave never rested until he had me removed. You remember the slaughter of his pheasants on the night Bob was sent to the county gaol? It was the colliers who were blamed; but was it they who did it? No fear. I knew very well there were in the country two men of far greater daring than all the colliers put together. Bob knew it, too, and so did your mother, poor thing After what had happened, I was not the man to go and tell the owner of the Hall who it was. If I had seen all his preserves on fire, and knew I could put out the flames by spitting on them, I wouldn’t have done so; for his treatment of me was worse than a dog’s. After Bob was sent to prison I had a very bad time of it. Nearly everybody hated me, although I couldn’t ‘help what had happened. Before that bother, I had a great many friends about, but they all cooled towards me, and towards every policeman in the place. I wasn’t at all sorry to leave. I have lived here ever since, and am now middling comfortable. About three years ago, quite accidentally, I lighted on your father. He got into a dreadful funk on seeing me, for he remembered I knew he had been guilty of something worse than poaching. But he needn’t have feared, and I told him so. A very fine policeman, ain’t I? But I felt I was under an obligation to your mother and to Bob, and I had no inclination to rake up old stories. After that, I met him many times; and, before he became an utter slave to drink, I used to visit him at his lodgings for a chat and a bit of news of the old home, which he and your uncle often visited, raiding the squire’s game. They didn’t conceal the fact from me, and I wouldn’t have cared had they stolen every pheasant in the place, for I owed the old a grudge. I never liked your uncle, but I could get along very well with your father; the reason, perhaps, being that we both had such a deadly enmity toward the squire. Your uncle never cared who owned the game, as long as he could get hold of it; but your father took a special pleasure in saying above his prey: ‘Here’s the Hall owner’s birds! They’ve cost him ten shillings a head Your father and uncle feathered the estate systematically throughout the years, and if you were to put me on my oath, I could not swear that some of the pheasants have not been on my table, for I was a friend of your father’s. Fine policeman, ain’t I? In the eating of those pheasants, my old vengeance was better than any sauce. I used to wonder why the two escaped capture for so long, until I got the explanation. You remember Nic’las of Garth Ddu? It was he who managed their expeditions, and found the pair a hiding place. Your father would tell me Nic’las was an old dealer in game, who knew half the poachers in the kingdom, and had done business with most of them. He had made a lot of money that way, and your father and uncle had been regular customers of his before he retired. It was your father who persuaded him to buy Garth Ddu, which was a city of refuge for him and your uncle ever after. The two kept up a constant correspondence with old Niclas. As you yourself are aware, no one over yonder looked on old Nic’las as quite a yard ‘square;’ but your father told me, many times, that if ever anybody was thirty-seven inches to the yard, Nic’las was the man. It was he who was their scout, and he took pleasure in the work. He walked the old paths, through the Hall Park and Berth Goch, at every hour of the night, without being suspected by anybody, but feared, rather, as a lunatic. He knew the exact spot which the keepers were watching, every night through the year. All that happened in the town was carried to him by the old woman, Modlen. How your father used to laugh while telling me of the jolly nights they spent at Garth Ddu “after a big catch! But it is all over now! You probably know Nic’las has left Garth Ddu. O, yes; he has sold the place these three months. He’s living here now, looking the same as when I first saw him. It is he who supports your father. When your father dies, no one knows where Nic’las’ll be next day. You must remember what I have told you is strictly confidential.”

By now I had finished my business at B——. I had got more light on what had been dark to me previously than I expected, and was in a hurry to return. The Sergeant and Will came with me to the railway station, the latter, with perfect frankness, saying: ‘If I bad known you were going to leave us on such short notice, you’d have had no drag through the sheets last night, for I haven’t told you the thousandth part of what I want to. It is just like a preacher shutting up directly he has got into the swing. A thing of this sort is not true to nature. By the time I reach myself and go home, you won’t be there, for you’ll be minister at Llangogor or somewhere, and I shall be without a chum.”

“You are not certain of that, Will,” I remarked. “What do you think? (the train was about to start), I’ve had a call to the pastorate of Bethel church, and I do not now see there is anything to prevent my accepting it.”

Will, smiling joyously at the news, said, “Fact? (the train was moving). Well, bye bye, and remember to be true to a

I did not catch the other word, but I guessed what it was, for I had heard the phrase hundreds of times before. Had I known at the moment that that was the last time I should hear the voice and see the face of my friend, my heart would have been sadder than it was, for, in spite of all his failings, his wit, honesty and naturalness, combined with his great fidelity to me when I was a boy, had made him a place in my heart from which I could never oust him, if I wished to. And I miss him sadly still.

Speeding my way back, I made a strong effort to forget the past, and to think only of the future. My whole being had received such a shock, and my mind was so sore disturbed, that I dreaded seeing examination day come round. I knew I should take a lower place than if what I have chronicled had not happened. This was a source of great worry to me. I foresaw that some would be ready to say I had been lazy, than which I could not imagine a more odious accusation, nor one from which I was more free, whatever might be my other shortcomings. Then I would think of my father in his deplorable condition. How fearful! And yet I felt some calmness of conscience at the thought that I had done my best for him; and I fancied, if fancy it were, hearing a well-known voice saying: ‘Do not grieve, my son. You have done your duty, as I myself did mine, by him. Between him and God be it, now.”

A ray of light shot across my mind. Not in vain had been my journey to B I persuaded myself that my encounter with Will Bryan was a blessing. I had reason to believe that he was not left untroubled by serious thoughts about his condition. He gave me his word that he would go to chapel, and I knew Will did not consider the man who broke his promise to be true to nature. Besides, I felt I was eternally rid of the nightmare which had haunted me for so many years. Henceforth I could apply myself to the work of preaching without fear of my name being brought into disgrace.

What now troubled me most was the examination. I was certain I should cut a sorry figure at it. But I was spared. When I reached Bala I felt very queer. I thought the old town had entirely changed within the last two days. I fancied I had made a mistake, and that 1 had got out at the wrong station. I was thankful it was late, for my limbs trembled, and I feared people would take me for a drunken man. After much trouble I reached my lodgings. With a great doubt on the subject, I opened the door. But I was right after all, for here was Williams shaking hands with me heartily. I have no recollection of anything else.

Nine or ten days later I found myself in bed. It was daylight, and I tried to sit up, but could not. I saw Williams at my side, and heard him say, “Well, lad; how do you feel?”

To which I answered, “What is the matter? Who has been beating me? Where have I been?”

With a brightening face, he bade me be quiet and told me I had been very ill.

“What day is it?’ I asked. “When does the Exam begin?”

“It is over, since yesterday,” he replied. “So you shan’t be at either top or bottom this time. You must try and keep still. You have been in a heavy fever, raving day and night about Will Bryan and some Sergeant. But you’re on the road to recovery now, and I am heartily glad of it. Oh! here is Dr. i. Well, Doctor, there’s some sense to be got from him to-day.”

“Has he got tired of talking of Will Bryan?” asked the Doctor. “It’s about time he changed his story now.”

Dr. was a popular man, skilful and lively, with only one fault: he would never send a bill to a student. He joked with me a deal that day. I asked him when should I go home.

“You must first go to Jericho,” he said, “and stay there till your hair grows.”

I felt my head. Alas! My hair had been all sheared away. I mourned it greatly, being prouder than I thought I was. I inquired how long it would take my hair to grow so that I shouldn’t be a fright to myself and to others, Weeks passed before I got strong enough to go home. Williams stayed a fortnight with me, behaving towards me with indescribable kindness. A few days before wishing each other good bye I gave him the substance of that long history which I have now nearly finished, which I believe no living soul knows except he and Will Bryan, and of which the facts, if they ever see the light, after I have gone the unreturnable way, will not be new to those two.