Mushroom Town

by Oliver Onions

"Well," he said by and by, from his place where he sat at the table alone, they respectfully yet proprietorially watching him eat and drink his tea, "now tell me about those matters in the letter you wrote.... I mean the other matters...."

But let us, before we pass to the other matters, look at the company that watched Mr. Tudor Williams eat.

First there was John Pritchard, sitting on the other side of the table with his hands upon his knees, and now and then turning his body a little aside and bowing his back to cough. There was John, stern religionist, believing in God and Disendowment; obstinate, dull, just, unsmiling; as ready for the Day of Judgment as if it had been the audit-day of the accounts he kept as principal trustee of the Baptist Chapel. For all that he was so rooted in Llanyglo that he had never travelled farther than Porth Neigr in the whole of his life, he was as ardent a supporter of Missionary Endeavour abroad as his voice was powerful at the Sasiwn at home. He watched Mr. Tudor Williams's plate, and with his thumb made signs for his daughter to replenish it.

Next, there was Howell Gruffydd, with his pale and studious son, Eesaac Oliver. You might have been sure even then that, should Llanyglo ever grow, Howell Gruffydd's fortune would grow with it. Howell considered a good penny worth the putting into his pocket, and, as if his apron (which, however, he had now left behind at the shop) had made half a housewife of him, he cared nothing, so it brought in money, whether he did a man's labour or washed up the dishes or black-leaded the grate. He could not read, but if at Porth Neigr a stranger chanced to ask him the way, he would smile and reply, "There is the signpost," allowing it to be understood that his questioner might read as well as he himself. Howell had his inner dream. It was of a shop with two large windows, and a bell inside the door, and brightly varnished showcards, and pyramids of tinned salmon, and peas within the window that should suggest the noses of children flattened against the pane, and handbills distributed in the streets, and two assistants, and a son at College, who should read for two, and perhaps—who knew?—sit while his constituents watched him eat his tea—Mr. Eesaac Oliver Gruffydd, M.P.

Then, with his cap in his hands and his feet shifting nervously, there was Dafydd Dafis, next to Eesaac Oliver, on the sofa. Should purchases and rumoured purchases of land prove to be a portent, Dafydd had all to lose and nothing to gain by change. With that soft cruelty of his of which the hard and more profoundly sentimental Englishman knows nothing, Dafydd was at least disinterested. The Kerrs he had forborne to harm, but he only hated them the more on that account. He himself would not have killed one of the blue and primrose butterflies that in the summer hovered over the Llanyglo buffets of wild thyme, and he could not understand a country that said it was fond of animals and yet, like these Lancashire men, hunted rats with terriers and coursed hares with dogs. Alone of that nation he had for a time loved delicate little Minetta Garden, and had told her stories of fairies and had sung Serch Hudol and Mentra Gwen to her; but Minetta had gone. All the things for which Dafydd Dafis cared had gone, or were going, and Dafydd was lonely. He told his harp so, with those warped and stealing fingers, and the harp made music of his pain. All that Dafydd would gain by change would be memories that became ever the more poignant the more they were attenuated, and the less the world cared for him and his unprofitable life.

Passing constantly between Mr. Tudor Williams and the saucepan where the eggs boiled, or the plate in the fender where the lightcakes kept hot, was Miss Nancy (née Nansi) Pritchard, schoolmistress and virtual custodian of the Post Office. The development of Llanyglo, did that ever come to pass, would be a good thing for Nancy, for otherwise there was none in Llanyglo to marry her, and to domestic service elsewhere she could not have stooped. She was tall and plump and ruddy, with black hair and black-lashed blue eyes, and in her conversation she gave the preference to the longer words. She had been to school in Bangor, wore the longest skirts in Llanyglo, and between her and her father's guest was the bond of their common superiority to everybody else there. She was a partie, for John Pritchard was well-to-do; but for whom? Apparently for nobody whom Llanyglo had yet seen.

The remaining spectators, with the exception of old Mrs. Pritchard, who resembled a mummy rather than a spectator, partook in varying degrees of these same characteristics; and there at the table sat Mr. Tudor Williams, M.P., of Ponteglwys, one of his eyes aflow with tears of sensibility while the other was glued to the main chance; Baptist, nationalist, and arguer by metaphor and analogy; an elocutionist, and a maker of elocutionists by that process of education that consists of giving a scholar a subject and bidding him straightway speak for five minutes upon it; and, above all, ever and again suggesting, by slight gesture or quick glance, that his secret thought was that there, in cap or corduroys, but for the Grace of God, went Mr. Tudor Williams of Ponteglwys....

At last he put up his hand, refusing to eat more.

"No more, no more indeed! It is the best bread and but-ter I have tasted since I was here before, but I should be ill in my stomach.—Dear me, John Pritchard, the happy hours I have spent in this room! 'Mid Pleas-sures and Palaces'—indeed there is tears in my eyes when I see the dres-ser with the plates on it, and the jugs, and Mrs. Prit-chard's Bible in the window, just the same as when I was a boy!—Well, I have had a splen-did tea at all events, and if you will excuse me a min-nit I will return thanks for it.... Now, my friends!—--"

Five minutes later, Mr. Tudor Williams, not so near to the Kerrs' Hafod that he had the appearance of specially watching it, nor yet so far from it but that he could see Ned Kerr and his brother Sam setting a rough window-sash into position, was once more shaking hands and patting shoulders and exchanging greetings with such of the men and women and children of Llanyglo as he had not yet seen.