"Eh?" he said.... "Oh!—You can have them for nothing. I was just thinking of that place of the Kerrs in Pontnewydd Street. I suppose you've heard all about that?"
"No, I've not heard a word," June declared. "Do tell me!"
After all, it was but a step from his real thought to the narrative he now told June. Between Dafydd Dafis and Tommy Kerr was now the association of an all but declared feud, which would break out into open enmity the moment anything happened to Tommy's brother Ned. More than any man in Llanyglo Dafydd had writhed at that wonderful building of the Hafod Unos, and since then he had remembered something else that had set him darkly flushing. It had been Tommy Kerr (or one of his boon companions—it came to the same thing) who, when Dafydd had returned rapt after the first day of the Eisteddfod, had cast two-pence on the ground and had drunkenly demanded a song. Yes, that remark, scarce heard at the time, had come back since. They had offered him, Dafydd, their dirty dross in exchange for Song, and had bidden him stoop to pick it up....
And that mortal insult had reminded Dafydd of an older memory still. This was, that of the four Kerrs, Tommy had been the only one who had not tumbled into that open boat when that chilling cry of "Llongddrylliad!" had sounded on that stormy night years and years before. That that had not been Tommy's fault mattered nothing; as soon as Dafydd had remembered this he had felt himself released from the last shadow of an obligation. It was another stick to beat Tommy with and "beating him" now meant, as everybody knew, waiting until his brother died and then "purring" him out of the Hafod, if not by fair means, then—well, purring him out none the less.
And that stick Tommy was to be beaten with was only the latest of many. It was a whole history of sticks—of the Council's Sons of Belial set at Tommy, collectors, inspectors of this and that and the other, policemen to apprehend him for drunkenness, sergeants to warn publicans that if they harboured Tommy they might be made to feel it in other ways.... But lately they had withdrawn this last prohibition. Putting their heads together, they had judged it best that Tommy should drink all he could, and more.... He had done so, and did not seem a single penny the worse for it. Moreover, he had now openly declared himself an abominator of Welshmen and everything else Welsh. Nightly he zig-zagged home crying out against the whole smiling, thievish crew, their Kursaals and Pavilions and Dancing-Halls and Concerts Llanyglo. He lurched along Pontnewydd Street after everybody else had gone to bed, roaring "Glan Meddwdod Mwyn." How he had twenty times escaped breaking his neck when they had laid down the Pontnewydd Street tramlines nobody knew.... And whenever he remembered that they wanted his Hafod and would have it as soon as Ned died, he offered to give it away to any Welshman who would repeat after him, word for word ... but his forms of words varied widely, and no more than the Amalekites could some of those against whom he railed pronounce his words that began with "sh."
So John Willie, as the landau bowled homewards, had to tell June all this, and June was extraordinarily interested. Minetta watched them both, and, in her turn, wondered about John Willie and his marrying. She liked to have June to visit her; she wasn't so sure that she wanted June as a standing ornamental dish. Indeed she rather thought she didn't, and, allowing for many large but still accidental differences, Minetta was not without a trace of the malicious humour of Tommy Kerr himself.
In fairness she had to admit, however, that so far there were no signs that June was setting her cap at John Willie.
That night again, however, John Willie had little luck of his searching, this time of Dafydd Dafis. He sought him at his home, he sought him abroad, but he failed to find him and he joined June and his sister again where they sat listening to The Lunas, those incomparable Drawing-Room Entertainers. He bought them chocolate and he bought them ices, and then, at the end of the performance, he proposed a walk along the Promenade before they turned in. Not to lose them, he passed an arm through either of theirs, his sister's arm and that of this tall and pretty and undisturbing extension of his sister. They set their faces towards the Pier that stretched like a sparkling finger out to sea.
It was the hour of the ebb, and lately, at that hour, an odd and new activity had begun to make sharper that contrast between the bright and crowded and restless Promenade and the solemn void that pushed as it were its dark breast against that two-miles-long chain of gold and silver lamps, straining the slender fetter into a curve. Down below the railings, at three or four points, not more, an upturned face with tightly shut eyes was praying aloud. They looked like little floating, drowned, yet speaking masks. Each evangelist had his little knot of three or four companions, but these had come with him, and of hearers they had none. They stood on the trampled sand, just below the gas-lighted line of pebbles; a boat drawn up, or a yard or two of groyne, struggled between light and shadow beyond them; far out in the bay the twinkle of a solitary light could be seen; the rest was blackness and immensity. It made Infinity seem strangely weak. Here It was, striving to make Itself known to the finite, Its sole instrument a little oval mask and a voice that could not be heard five yards away; and never a head was turned. Calling and laughing, the babel of their voices like the rattle of the pebbles that roll back with the retiring wave, they passed and passed and passed. One would have said that some vast angelic skater had cut that sweeping outside-edge of light, and then, repulsed, had rushed away into the darkness again.
And this was something else for John Willie to tell this pretty, unexigent June. It had only been going on about a fortnight, he said, but he didn't think they'd heard the last of it yet. There was a Revival or something coming slowly up the coast, he said, and—who did June think was doing it?—why, Eesaac Oliver Gruffydd!