“You are fully and freely forgiven, Mary. I have always known that my child’s heart is right—it is her head that is wrong.”
Mary Wythburn had found her parents, thanks to Arthur Knight’s assistance, and she was supremely happy. It was wonderful that they had not met before; but there is no place where it is so possible to lose one’s self as London, and they had been within a few miles of each other without once coming into contact. Mary had learnt many salutary lessons during her voluntary absence from her parents. She felt herself more than a year older, though less than that time had elapsed since she disappeared from her home on the day fixed for her marriage. That the marriage had not become an accomplished fact she never regretted; but she would ever feel sorrow and humiliation as she thought of her own cowardice in not facing the situation earlier. But that was all over now, and the new life, with all its vivid interests, was that which of all others she would have chosen.
“Mr. Knight will not let me go with his people unless you give your consent,” she said; “and, indeed, I could not myself go without it, for I have never been really happy, knowing that I must be causing you pain and anxiety.”
“You never ought to have set yourself up as a teacher of others when you were so failing in your own duty,” her father said; but it was the only stern sentence that fell from his lips. “You shall go with these people,” he added; “and if Mr. Knight will let us come too and help, as far as we are able, in the good work, we will be very glad.”
So Mary, who wept first for home and sorrow, afterward cried for joy, and when the party of English folk went away to settle in one of the loveliest parts of the north of mid-Wales, the Wythburns all accompanied them.
Arthur Knight had found the very place he wanted—a large space of moorland and waste miles of land unoccupied, excepting for a few farmhouses. The land was not in a very high state of cultivation; but when, for the first time, he stood and gazed upon it, his imagination covered it, as it was to-day, with bright and pleasant homes and long bits of garden-land, in which the people might learn the joy of growing their own flowers and vegetables. The place chosen was at the head of a glen, which led down to Afon Wen, a small village on the shore. The place itself—five miles from Afon Wen—was called Craighelbyl. There was a large old house on the top of the hill standing in its own grounds, which wore a very neglected and dejected appearance. It had been left to itself for nearly a hundred years, and all sorts of interesting and dreadful tales were told about it. It had belonged to “one of the great families” years and years ago, and the old sailors could spin as good a yarn about it as of the sea itself. The owner of the Hall had kept a smuggling cellar on the coast; and it was said that a long underground passage led from the Hall to the sea. This man had been an irreligious Englishman, who had married a Welsh lady and treated her badly; and there were dark stories of a crime once committed in the house, which had in consequence stood tenantless for a long period. There were not many things left in it; there was a little furniture, but it had disappeared, nobody knew how; and if there did happen to be a table or a chair in some of the cottages thereabouts which looked as if it did not quite belong to the cottages, nobody knew how it came to be there, certainly nobody belonging to this generation. The last person who had occupied the house was a farmer, but he and his wife had died there. Another farmer thought of taking it, but there was no land to be farmed, little but moors and rocks and sea, and this man only spent a week there, and it was such a stormy week as only this part of our country knows. So he soon had enough of it, and he declared that the rooms were so dismal that all the wealth of the Indies would not be payment enough for him to stay. So, as there was no one to tempt him by offering him such wealth, he left, and since then it had been empty. Some stone had been taken away from the place and used to make walls; and, indeed, sometimes they had talked of pulling the house down altogether, for the sake of the materials.
It was a happy thing for Arthur Knight and his people that this had not been done, for of all his purchases this old house, perhaps, pleased him the best. The ancient mansion was to be put to highest uses, and every room in it was to echo with the joyous voices of the young people who were learning to be good citizens, and Christian men and women. For educational and social purposes no better place could have been discovered. It was itself a lesson in Welsh history; and Mr. Knight had expended a large sum of money in providing it with a good library, pictures, and a museum, in keeping with its traditions. Round about this house the new village had been planted.
Mr. Knight hoped that there would be good fellowship between his English and the Welsh, to the ultimate advantage of both. He could not tell what the natives of Craighelbyl said about him and his people, because he did not understand Welsh; but he found them quite willing to work for him, and it was very much through them, and because any number of labourers could be secured to unite in friendly rivalry with Englishmen, that the township rose so rapidly to completion. It was fortunate for him that the building trade was bad generally, and he had, therefore, no difficulty in securing a colony of builders.
One evening some young Welshmen were talking over the affairs of the nation. “We are on the eve of a change,” said one, “when every man will have what is right and true. It is coming.”
“And soon—forthwith, as you may say. At least, that is my creed.”