IX
A quarter of a mile behind our inn of Glanymôr stood the buildings of a fair-sized farm. I used often to walk to Pen Maelgwyn, whose name recalled that of a doughty Welsh chieftain slain in Plantagenet days, ascending the slope thither by means of a narrow footpath traversing the russet stubbles wherein still lingered a few gay marigolds and fragile poppies. The front of the house, a long low erection, was coloured a Naples yellow, but its roof and many clustering byres and sheds were all thickly coated with dazzling whitewash. Above the porch and many windows set with diminutive panes had been painted ornamental stripes of black and vermilion in a local style that has now almost fallen out of fashion. Before the threshold lay a broad stone slab marked in chalk with elaborate patterns in rings and lines, which Dr Wayne, who is skilled in Celtic folk-lore, tells me is a relic of the dim past, when such tracery was designed to entice the good fairies indoors and at the same time to exclude any malignant elementals that might be skulking near. The whole length of the façade of the dwelling was distinguished by a narrow walled-in flower garden, wherein Mrs Mary Davies, the farmer's wife, cherished a number of gaudy dahlias, Indian pinks, purple asters and tall spikes of golden-rod, these last being much patronised by a pair of elegant Red Admiral butterflies.
The messuage and its attendant buildings were wholly enclosed within a low rampart of rubble and loose boulders, also profusely daubed with the prevailing whitewash, this boundary wall surrounding an irregular space which included a round weed-covered pond and a number of middens for the cackling fowls of every condition—geese, chickens, ducks, turkeys and even peacocks. The yard was dirty, stony and unkempt, yet it possessed a certain fascination of its own, and there was a stile surmounting its haphazard parapet whereon I often sate, sometimes to watch the crowded life of the haggard, but more generally with my face turned towards the open sea. By directing my eyes hence in a sou'-westerly direction, so as to avoid the converging lines of the Welsh and Irish coasts, I had been told that nothing but the ocean with no intervening obstacle of land stretched between the cliffs of Glanymôr and the far-away coast of North America. There were no trees within a mile and more of Pen Maelgwyn, but the rough stone wall was heavily fringed with tall aromatic herbs such as tansy, wormwood and wild reseda to make amends for the total lack of arboreal verdure.
Hither then I often strolled during the morning hours when Dr Wayne was absorbed in his newspapers or his correspondence, and from the date of my first intrusion at Pen Maelgwyn I always received a courteous welcome from Mr and Mrs Davies, the tenants of the place, who held a couple of hundred acres of varied but indifferent land. That Mr Hannaniah Davies belonged to the old school was evident from his speech, his dress and his professed outlook on life itself. Having served as bailiff for many years to a neighbouring squire he spoke English easily and correctly, and moreover with a well-bred accent. His wife Mary, on the other hand, could scarcely aspire to a word of any language save her native Welsh, so that our intercourse was of necessity confined to gesticulation and smiles, or to a few trivial phrases of which the expressions "Dim Saesneg" on her part and of "Dim Cymraeg" on mine, were perhaps the most lucid and useful. With Hannaniah however I often held converse—on the war, on politics, on travel, on religious controversy; and though he was bigoted and benighted in his tenets yet he could argue with politeness and good temper, which constitutes a virtue in itself, and that no common one. Our debates were usually held in the kitchen (which I vastly preferred to the chill musty parlour with its garish modern furniture and its repellent portraits of pastors and demagogues) and in this low warm cosy chamber I loitered for many a pleasant hour. The uneven stone floor was generally strewn with lily-white sand; the settle and chairs and dresser of pale Welsh oak shone brightly with Mary's affectionate polishing; I loved the many quaint old jugs and plates which had happily escaped the accursed hand of the plundering collector. In the deep-set space of the sole window flourished Mary's winter garden, a miscellaneous series of pots and saucers containing a fine geranium, a fuchsia, a trailing white campanula, some musk and a bizarre vegetable of the leek family that resembled a shining green octopus set on end. Above our heads depended from the rafters fine hams and bunches of odorous sage and marjoram.
In this old-time chamber I often partook of my "merenda," which invariably consisted of a glass of buttermilk with one or two square currant-engrained biscuits known to the polite world as Garibaldis, but owning a less romantic if more descriptive name in the days of my boyhood. This matutinal hospitality, I may add, was repaid not in coin but by the loan of papers and periodicals which Hannaniah read by the aid of a pair of antiquated spectacles, that reposed on the great sheepskin folio Welsh Bible always ready for use. Thus alternately reading aloud and discoursing, with Mary's clogs clattering in and out of the fragrant kitchen, I often succeeded in making the worthy Hannaniah waste an hour or more of his valuable agricultural time in the course of the morning.
A calendar month had already elapsed since our arrival at Glanymôr, and I was beginning to wonder in what guise the waiting Meleagrian envoys would next present themselves. Yet although the month had been fulfilled, with a few days to spare, I was still speculating as to how, when and where they would approach me. With my mind absorbed in anticipation and replete with intense curiosity that was not tinctured by any alarm, I went one morning to Pen Maelgwyn on my usual errand, and on my arrival found my friend Hannaniah much excited over a matter of domestic concern, which he was eager to impart to me. It appeared that both Mr Davies's farm lads, English-speaking boys from a large industrial school of the Midlands, had been lately secured in the local recruiting nets, so that the farm itself was suffering in consequence of their departure. There were none to fill the vacant places, and so pressed was the farmer that two days ago he had been only too thankful to engage the temporary services of what he described as a "nigger tramp," who called himself an Indian. The new-comer certainly did not seem very proficient in the duties he declared himself willing to perform but he seemed intelligent and anxious to please; whilst on his side the sorely tried Hannaniah was thankful to obtain even such inferior assistance as this. There were hopes expressed that the strange heathen might in time develop into a fairly capable farm hand, and in this expectation even the suspicious Mrs Davies had agreed to lay aside her intense prejudice against the man's colour and appearance. Thus spake Hannaniah Davies; and I need not say that at this piece of news my heart began to hammer at my ribs, though not (I can truthfully vouch) with fear, but rather with suppressed exaltation. For I felt thankful to be relieved at last from my long spell of uncertainty and indecision, than which any definite evil seemed almost preferable. The idea of coming action served to brace and vivify me, so that it required some restraint on myself to criticise the matter propounded by the farmer with the proper degree of calmness. I approved warmly his decision to employ the stranger, and then remarked with an air of indifference: "I wonder if by any chance I can speak your black man's language, if he is really an Indian, as he declares. I have spent many years among the natives of Hindostan, and I should much like to interview the man, whose name you tell me is Hamid."
I had scarcely finished speaking when Hannaniah, looking out of one of the tiny panes of thick greenish glass of the kitchen window, spied the subject of our conversation crossing the yard, and at my suggestion he beckoned him to approach the homestead. Mrs Davies, too, who had paused from her usual routine of scrubbing, was deeply interested, and in her native vernacular expressed her admiration for the powers of the Saxon gentleman who could speak the language of the blacks, for in her simple philosophy all dark-skinned foreigners owned but one lingo, whilst a multiplicity of tongues was a special privilege reserved for the Aryan race. Hannaniah was no doubt more enlightened on such a point, but I fancy he had no fixed or correct views concerning Indians and negroes; it would therefore in no way be surprising to him, a good bilinguist, that anyone who had lived in the East like myself should understand the language of a wandering Oriental. He left the room, and I followed him into the soft breeze and the mellow October sunshine which was reviving Mary's rain-sodden dahlias round which the Red Admirals were hovering with brilliant if somewhat tattered wings.
The figure of the newly hired labourer could be observed slowly descending the long yard, for he was encumbered with a bundle of clover under his left arm, whilst his right side was heavily weighed down by a bucket of some provender for the calves. His garments formed a sort of ugly compromise between the costumes of East and West—a turban of soiled mauve muslin, a shabby threadbare brown coat and loose baggy trousers of canvas such as Levantine sailors affect. In this cheap and unattractive garb I quickly recognised Fajal, a leading member of the hierarchy of Meleager, and after Anzoni the most trustworthy and agreeable personage of all that august body to my mind. On our appearance in the yard the new servant halted a moment, placed the dirty bucket on the ground, and made an obeisance equally to Mr Davies and myself. As he bent before us in his squalid disguise, with his delicate shapely hands encrusted with barley-meal, and with his shoddy boots all caked with filthy mud, I reflected and marvelled for a second or two on the inexorable sense of duty or responsibility which could compel such a man as Fajal, whose pedigree could easily vie with that of a Habsburg or a Colonna, to stoop to such abasement and to face such vicissitudes. Yet though he bent ragged and grimy and cringing before us, I could still detect the noble fruit concealed within the rugged husk, albeit such a gift of discrimination was wholly beyond the range of the farmer's blunter powers of perception and inferior knowledge of humanity. I addressed a few commonplace phrases in Meleagrian to Fajal, who replied with discreet modesty, only in his last sentence bidding me seek him in the adjacent byre as soon as it was feasible. Mr Davies standing by was certainly impressed with the fluency of our conversation, but after an admiring "Well! Well!" as a tribute to my linguistic attainments, he turned away in order to visit his head labourer, John Lewis, who was cutting bracken on the distant lea against the sky-line. I accompanied my host so far as the farm gate, but declined to walk with him to the upland, whither I watched him proceed alone. With the master and man busy over the fern stacking, with the mistress and maids employed within the dairy or kitchen, the way was clear before me. I turned my eyes with mixed feelings towards the indicated byre, which stood next to a row of newly thatched ricks of oats and barley, the spoils of the lately garnered harvest. In that humble structure I knew there tarried now for me the messenger of Fate, the arbiter of my destiny. It was as useless, as it would have been cowardly, to evade or postpone the inevitable interview, so without further ado I carefully shut the yard gate and slowly picked my steps through the stones and mire to the open doorway of the shippen.
X
The cow-house at Pen Maelgwyn was a lengthy rather dilapidated building, and in its atmosphere of semi-darkness and bovine stuffiness I groped my way along the narrow passage between the crazy old mud wall and the wooden railing which secured the beasts. At the farther end was a square pen wherein the calves were kept, and it was here that at length I chanced on Fajal who was busily occupied in feeding his charges. On noticing me approach, he made an end of his task, and letting down the slip rail advanced to accost me in the gangway. Here he sank on his knees upon the slimy cobbles, at the same time catching hold of my coat with uplifted hands. This unexpected attitude of worship and devotion at once struck me unpleasantly; I deemed it insincere and inappropriate; and I repelled my suppliant in no gracious manner, striving to disengage myself from his grasp.