David: "Oh no. It was only a slight touch and I dare say I exaggerate ... I've left the Army however and now I'm reading Law..."
Blackbeard thinks at this point that he has gone far enough in cross-examination and returns to his periodicals and pamphlets. But there's something he likes—a wistfulness—in the young man's face, and he can't quite detach his mind to the presence of palæolithic man in South Wales. At Swindon they both get out—there was still lingering the practice of taking lunch there—have a hasty lunch together and more talk, and share a bottle of claret.
On returning to their compartment, Rossiter offers David a cigar but the young man prefers smoking a cigarette. By this time they have exchanged names. D.V.W. however is reticent about the South African War—says it was all too horrible for words, and should never have taken place and he can't bear to think about it and was knocked out quite early in the day. Now all he asks is peace and quiet and the opportunity of studying law in London so that he may become some day a barrister. Rossiter says—after more talk, "Pity you're going in for the Bar—we've too many lawyers already. You should take up Science"—and as far as the Severn Tunnel discourses illuminatingly on biology, mineralogy, astronomy, chemistry as David-Vivien had never heard them treated previously. In the Severn Tunnel the noise of the train silences both professor and listener, who willingly takes up the position of pupil. Between Newport and Neath, David thinks he has never met any one so interesting. It has been his first real induction into the greatest of all books: the Book of the Earth itself. Rossiter on his part feels indefinably attracted by this young expatriated Welshman. David does not say much, but what he does contribute to the conversation shows him a quick thinker and a person of trained intelligence. Yet somehow the professor of Biology in the University of London—and many other things beside—F.R.S., F.Z.S., F.L.S., Gold Medallist of this and that Academy and University abroad—does not "see" him as a soldier or a non-commissioned officer in the British Army: law-student is a more likely qualification. However as they near Swansea, Michael Rossiter gives Mr. D.V. Williams his card (D.V.W. regrets he cannot reciprocate but says he has hardly settled down yet to any address) and—though as a rule he is taciturn in trains and cautious about making acquaintances—expresses the hope he will call at 1, Park Crescent some afternoon—"My wife and I are generally at home on Thursdays"—when all are back in town for the autumn. They separate at Swansea station.
David spends the night at Swansea, employing some of his time there by enquiring at the Terminus Hotel as to the roads that lead up the valley of the Llwchwr, what sort of a place is Pontystrad ("the bridge by the meadow"), whether any one knows the clergyman of that parish, Mr.... er ... Howel Vaughan Williams. The "boots" or one of the "bootses," it appears, comes from the neighbourhood of Pontystrad and knows the reverend gentleman by sight—a nice old gentleman—has heard that he's aged much of late years since his son ran away and disappeared out in Africa. His sight was getting bad, Boots understood, and he could not see to do all the reading and writing he was once so great at.
After a rather wakeful night, during which D.V. Williams is more disturbed by his thoughts and schemes than by the continual noises of the trains passing into and out of Swansea, he rises early and drafts a telegram:—
Revd. Howel Williams, Vicarage, Pontystrad, Glamorgan. Hope return home this evening. All is well.
David.
Then pays his bill and tries to mount his bicycle the wrong way to the great amusement of the Boots; then remembers the right way and rides off, with the confidence of one long accustomed to bicycling, through the crowded traffic of Swansea in the direction of Llwchwr.
It was a very hot ride through a very lovely country, now largely spoilt by mining and metallurgy, along a road that was constantly climbing up steeply to descend abruptly. David of course could have travelled by rail to the Pontyffynon station and thence have ridden back three miles to Pontystrad. But he wished purposely to bicycle the whole way from Swansea and take in with the eye the land of his fathers. He was postponing as long as possible the test of meeting his father, the father of the young n'eer-do-weel who had been lying for months in a South African field hospital the year before. He halted for a cup of tea at Llandeilotalybont ... Wales has many place names like this ... and being there not many miles from Pontystrad was able to glean more recent and more circumstantial information about the man he proposed to greet as "father."
At half-past six that evening, having perspired and dried, perspired and dried, strained a tendon and acquired a headache, he halted before the gate of the Vicarage garden at Pontystrad, having been followed thither to his secret annoyance by quite a troop of village boys of whom he had imprudently asked the way. As they talked Welsh he could not tell what they were saying, but conjectured that his telegram had arrived and that he was expected.