Squire Graspacre now secretly anticipated the completion of his scheme, anxiously waiting for the departure of his guests, who by their noisy hilarity had long given notice that a very little more devotion to the bottle would lay them all under the table. The wily squire however desisted, before he had passed the boundary of what topers call half and half, considering in the mean time, that his plan would best succeed by not appearing before Gwenny Cadwgan till midnight, when all his household would be asleep, and himself supposed to have retired to his room.
After some trouble, which was heightened by forced suppression of laughter, that, however, broke out in spite of them, the servants got the donkey up stairs, having previously fed her with bread, oaten cakes, and oats, on her rejection of ale, wine, fowl, and tea, which to their own great amusement they had successively offered in vain. Having brought the poor animal into the green room, the best chamber in the house, and kept only for particular guests, they placed her on the fine handsome bed; the legs being already tied, they fastened them also to the bed posts. Twm heightened the drollery of the scene by cutting two holes in a night cap, drawing through them the ass’s ears, and slitting it at the edge, he drew the cap down towards the eyes. Thus secured and accoutred, they bade her good night, locked the door, and gave the key to their master.
The guests at length dispersing, they all rode off as well as their muddled heads would let them, to their respective homes; the squire, as was his custom, locked the door himself, and saw every light in the house out before he retired himself. At length he gained his chamber, and all was still in Graspacre Hall. The amorous squire, chuckling at his luck as he thought of the fair lass in the green chamber, grew too impatient to wait till the proposed hour of midnight, and leaving his candle on his own table, took off his shoes, and softly approached the casket, that he deemed contained his precious jewel. Applying the key, he opened the door very gently, and cautiously approaching the side of the bed, said in a whisper towards the pillow, “Don’t be alarmed Gwenny, my dear, ’tis I, the squire; fear nothing my girl, this will be the making of your fortune my dear; and if you are as kind and loving as I could wish you to be, you may soon become the second Mrs. Graspacre.” Hearing no reply, he considered that according to the old adage, silence gives consent, and proceeded to bend his face down to kiss the fair one, when a severe bounce inflicted by a toss of his incognita’s snout, knocked him backwards off the bed to the floor, and set his nose a-bleeding. After recovering himself a little, though labouring under the delusion that the blow had been struck by the hand of a fair maiden, he exclaimed in an under tone, “You little vixen, how dare you treat me in this manner?” Proceeding more roughly again towards the bed, he was completely horror-struck at the loud bray which the terrified ass sent forth; while the poor animal, after a hard struggle, liberating her limbs, struck him a severe blow on the forehead with her hoof, and getting off the bed, made a terrible clatter with her shod feet over the boards of the room. The unfortunate squire, although hitherto a loud decrier of superstition, now felt a thrill of the utmost horror pervade him, while he deemed himself ensnared by the enemy of man, as the punishment of his guilty intentions; and after a clamorous outcry fell senseless on the floor.
The servants, having but concealed the lights, expecting some denouement of this sort, now rushed in, and saw their fallen master ghastly pale, with streams of perspiration running over his forehead, while his wildly-staring eyes alternately looked at and turned from the monster of alarm. When he had sufficiently recovered to learn the real stand of the affair, from little Pembroke, who had been made Twm’s confidante in this matter—how that wight had brought the farmer’s ass according to his orders behind him on the pillion, although he had been in some doubt whether he had said Cadwgan’s ass, or Cadwgan’s lass, the squire’s rage was boundless. Exasperated at the trick put upon him by a mere youngster, and a menial, and scarcely less provoked at the exposure he had made of himself before his servants, down he rushed into the hall, and snatched a heavy horse-whip, unlocked the door, and made his way towards our hero’s chamber over the lawndry; but when he reached the bed-side, prepared to inflict the severest punishment that the thong of a whip was capable of, how great was his mortification to find the bird flown! his chagrin and resentment were anything but lessened, when he took up a sheet of paper off the bed, on which in a large hand were written these pretty lines.
If from lass you take the letter L,
Then lass is ass if I have learnt to spell;
Yet ass and lass methinks are coupled ill,
Though human asses follow lasses still;
An ass were I too—one yclept a ninny—
If now I stay’d to claim my promised guinea.
CHAP. XII.
Carmarthen Jack’s churlishness to Twm. His mishap in consequence. Squire Graspacre reforms his conduct. Sends for his son and daughters home. A delicate Devonshire lady, Twm’s satire on the cook. Gives the young squire a thrashing, and runs away. Visits Rhys and Cadwgan. About to be married to Gwenny. A dreadful adventure on the hills that ruins all his prospects.
Twm reached his mother’s at Tregaron about one o’clock in the morning, and alarmed her greatly by the account he gave of his flight from the squire’s, and the cause which led to it. Jack made the best of the affair, in his own manner, by assuring his wife that her son had been the absolute ruin of both himself and her, unless they did their utmost to conciliate the squire by turning Twm adrift, and refusing him a temporary shelter. While Jack beneath the bedclothes was grunting these suggestions of worldly wisdom, Catti, half-drest, was making up a bed for her son, who, the while, was sitting dejectedly in the chimney corner. Having caught the drift of his father-in-law’s mutterings, he rose abruptly, snatched up his hat, and while striding towards the door, cried, “Good night mother.” Alarmed at his precipitate movement, and the tone with which he spoke, “Where are you going Twm?” said Catti. Turning round, while he held the door in his left hand, he replied, “Any where mother—the world is wide—and I’ll go headlong to the devil rather than stay here, when I am not welcome.” With that he closed the door, and was in a moment out of sight, notwithstanding the cries and entreaties of his mother, who ran after, and earnestly sought to bring him back.
Catti, with a bitter consciousness, now found that her son had a stepfather, and she a husband, who was a rude and churlish tyrant. The severity of this reflection preyed heavily on her mind; nor could she be persuaded to go to bed again, but sitting at the fireless hearth she loudly wept and lamented her hard fate. To give him his due, Jack was far from being regardless of her sorrow, but shewed the tenderness of a husband in comforting her, in the manner most natural to himself. “What signifies crying for such an imp of the devil as that,” said this kind stepfather, “if he starves in the field by being out to-night, it will save him from dying at the gallows, where he would be sure to come some day or other.” This tender-hearted speech had the unexpected effect of immediately curing Catti’s grief, which turned to a desperate fit of rage, and without a word to signify the transition wrought by his oratory, she snatched up a stout broom-stick from the floor, and be-laboured him with all her strength, as he lay beneath the bedclothes, till he roared like a baited bull: had she taken a wager for thrashing a given quantity of corn in a certain number of minutes, she could not have laid on her blows more briskly or vigorously. When the strength of her arms failed, the energy of her tongue commenced, and after rating him soundly, she concluded her harangue with eloquent pithiness, hoping that she had left him a shirtful of broken bones; after which exertion she thought proper to disappear.
Jack although he received some hard blows, by dodging under the bedclothes, escaped better than his help-mate intended he should; he soon rose, dressed himself, and went to his master’s, sauntering sullenly about the outhouses till daylight, when a servant informed him, after narrating Twm’s trick on his master, that he was to take Cadwgan’s ass home.