III
THE CURTAIN RAISER
But while the march of events drove the aborigines of Llanyglo ever more and more closely together, as the reaping of a field of corn drives the mice and snakes and rabbits to the narrowing square in the centre, at the same time something of the opposite process went on. Two or three stood aloof, Welsh when it suited them to be Welsh, less Welsh at other times. One of these was Mr. Tudor Williams, the Member of Parliament. Another was Howell Gruffydd, the grocer.
For thick as thieves now were Edward Garden and Tudor Williams, and to their frequent councils was admitted also Raymond Briggs, the architect, whose son had been John Willie's schoolfellow at Pannal.
This Raymond Briggs was a Yorkshireman, from Hunslet, but you wouldn't have thought it to look at him. You saw at a glance that he was superfine, but you had no idea how superfine until he opened his mouth. He was tall, plumpish, very erect, numerously chinned and faultlessly dressed; and, having entered into culture by one of the noblest of its portals, architecture, it was small wonder that he wished to forget Hunslet, with its black canal, its serried weaving-sheds, its grimy warehouses, and its sooty brickfields. Certainly he had completely forgotten it in his speech. Over an alien mode he had acquired a really remarkable mastery; and had it not been for a trifling uncertainty about his vowels, particularly his "a's," you would have set him down as quite as much London as Leeds. And so more or less with everything else about Raymond.—But his wife haled you north again. To her, acquirements were like hot plates to the fingers, to be kept constantly in motion or else dropped altogether. Her husband was probably the most humourless man who ever came to Llanyglo; but Maud Briggs would use the homeliest of dialect-words in the most artificial of accents, and would tell you, even while she was mothering you with cool drinks in the most hospitable fashion, that the piece of ice she dropped with a clink into your glass was positively "the last piece in the hoil"—if you know your West Riding well enough to understand the peculiar significance of the word "hoil" as applied to a house. Her rings were dazzling, for Raymond's invaluable lack of humour had enabled him to make his mark on the world; the blue-and-white collapsible boat which their son Percy brought with him to Llanyglo had cost his father a cool twenty-five pounds in London; and it would not be for lack of money if Percy did not turn out a very superior silk purse indeed.
So when the snail, his journey finished, rested and made the siding at Sarn and then returned to Porth Neigr again, and Railhead was dismantled, and grasses began to seed themselves about the upturned soil, Edward Garden and Raymond Briggs and Tudor Williams, M.P., had their heads frequently together; and no longer were the short days and long nights a season of hibernation for Llanyglo. Three years out of four the Llanyglo winters are mild; this particular winter was not so inclement that it stopped building-operations for more than a day or two at a time; and, with a sort of miniature Railhead strung out along the Porth Neigr road for his labour, Raymond's second house rose steadily course by course, and already they were draining and digging for the first hotel. If they were mainly Porth Neigr men Raymond employed, that did not mean that Dafydd Dafis or any other Llanyglo man who was so minded would not be taken on; indeed they were taken on; but it did mean that the centre of gravity of the labour-supply had shifted, and would never shift back again. Those temporary dwellings along the Porth Neigr road were a constant reminder that if the Llanyglo men did not like it they might lump it; and as they did neither, but while disliking it intensely, bore a hand and took their wages just the same, they appeared to be sufficiently quelled.
Edward Garden, while making Llanyglo his headquarters, was again much away. A whisper was started that he was once more treating for land, but, as no further land appeared to be available, the rumour was derided as idle. Howell Gruffydd was already converting the two original matchboarded cottages to his own use. Something Departmental happened somewhere beyond Llanyglo's ken (probably Mr. Tudor Williams knew all about it), and the word came that the Post Office was to be transferred from John Pritchard's to Howell's new shop; and though the Post Office was on the whole more trouble than it was worth, for a little while Howell seemed likely to have a quarrel on his hands.
But Howell had not definitely taken a part without knowing equally definitely how to bear himself in that part. He did not intend to be herded into the gloomy company of a lot of beaten and sulking Welsh nationalists! As if already a vast spud had cut about Manchester or Liverpool, and an equally vast spade had taken either of these cities up bodily like a square of peat and had set it down again on the Llanyglo sandhills, so the idea of expansion had taken hold of Howell's mind. He even went a little preposterously beyond bounds, as others did later, when they learned that their old Welsh dressers and armchairs were a rarity and marketable, and proceeded to put ridiculous prices upon them. And probably Edward Garden had a use for Howell. Already it looked like it. The answer with which Howell appeased John Pritchard in the matter of the transference of the Post Office looked very much like it. Edward Garden himself could not so have reconciled John to all this innovation with a single whispered word.
For "Bazaars," Howell said furtively to John, behind his hand; and the quick electric gleam in his eyes was instantly extinguished again....
You see. They had never had a bazaar at Llanyglo. There would have been little profit in passing their own money about among themselves. But strangers' money.... That was the soul of good in things otherwise evil that Howell whispered to John Pritchard, and later it was so observingly distilled out for the benefit of the Baptist and other Chapels that for a time there was actually a danger lest the mulcting should keep folk away.