But Owen made no move to the wash-house. He was watching Marged.
There is a look in his eyes of a man in love that will have you in fits unless you are in love yourself. If you are, you will feel something move inside you to be of help to him, to try and have him happy even if there is no chance for you.
This look was in the eyes of Owen. You will see a part of it in the eyes of sheep fastened to the board and waiting for the knife. The other part you will see only in the eyes of a good man who has put his heart into the hands of a girl. It is a light that is rarely of the earth, a radiance that is holy, a warming, happy agony that do shine from inside and turn what it touches to something of paradise.
Marged felt that look, because she straightened her shoulders and made to shiver.
“Are you going for the bucket,” she asked him, and making a big swallow.
“O,” said Owen, as though he had smashed a window. “Yes, indeed. Now, just.”
He had no notion where to put his iron, so he put it outside the door while he went for the bucket. Of course, if one of us had only touched his iron, never mind leaving it outside, blood would have run in the gutters. That is love for you.
Back he came, then, and went forward step by step till he was at the side of her, but still she was stitching.
“Ermhh, mhh, mhh,” said Owen, scraping like an old hen, “shall I have some, now?”
“Give it to me,” said Marged, and down went the work again.
She stood up, trying not to look, but burning coals are not as hot as the eyes of men like Owen, and so, wanting to or not, Marged was forced to look up, slowly from the bucket, up his arm to his shoulder, and slowly again, so slowly, up his face.
To his eyes.
At first I could not see Marged in the face because her back was to the fire and the lamp was behind her. But I had no need to see, for I could feel. And I could see her hands tight fast in her apron.
“Marged,” said Owen, for the first time.
“Yes,” said Marged. I nearly fell through the bed so cold was her voice.
“I have got my bucket,” said Owen, so silly I was sorry for him.
“Here is the water,” said Marged, and waved behind her.
“Yes,” said Owen, but no move.
“They will be home from choir in a minute,” said Marged, and I could see the shadow bless her throat as she swallowed again.
“I wish they would never come back,” said Owen.
“There is wicked you are,” said Marged, but not a bit stern.
“I am speaking the truth, Marged,” said Owen. “There is beautiful you are.”
“No,” said Marged, between a sigh and a sob.
“Yes,” said Owen.
“No,” said Marged, not so certain.
“Behold,” Owen said, from Solomon, “thou art fair. Thou hast dove’s eyes.”
“Dove’s eyes are small,” Marged said.
“Your’s are so big they are all my world,” said Owen.
“No,” said Marged, high.
“Yes,” Owen said, and put down the bucket. “I love you, Marged Evans.”
“There is silly,” said Marged, going cold again, “only five days you have known me.”
“I knew from the moment,” said Owen, and I believed him. “I have known you five thousand years. In jewels and gold.”
“Jewels and gold?” said Marged. “Since when, now?”
“By the brook of Hebron,” said Owen. “Oh, Marged.”
Marged’s hands flew up on wings to her throat so pretty was his voice with her name.
“I have no jewels or gold,” she said, trying to be cold again. But even Owen knew now.
“You shall have them,” he said, and meant it. “Wait you till I sell my inventions. You shall have everything to your heart’s want. And no work about the house.”
“No work about the house?” asked Marged.
“No,” said Owen.
“What will I do all day, then?” asked Marged.
“You shall wait for me,” said Owen. “When will you marry me?”
“I will have to ask Dada,” said Marged.
“Make your own mind to answer,” said Owen. “When?”
“You will wake Huw,” Marged said, shaking.
“When?” asked Owen.
“You will make me cry,” said Marged. “Leave it, now.”
Owen looked at her, and Marged’s hands dropped again. For minutes, it did seem, they looked at each other. They were still, hardly a breath, looking.
Almost before my eyes could see, Owen caught her by the shoulders and kissed her, so long I thought they were turned to salt.
“Marged,” he said, and his voice was rough and sore with him. “O, Marged.”
“Owen,” she was whispering.
“I love you,” he said.
“Me, too,” she said.
“No,” he said, as though astonished, unbelieving.
“Yes, indeed,” she said, and you will never hear deeper truth. “When I saw you first.”
“No,” he said. “Like I did?”
“Yes,” she said. “Like you did. And when you stood up for me about the chicken, I wanted to kiss you.”
“Marged,” he said, and holding her again. “There is beautiful you are.”
“I wish I was,” she said.
“Beyond compare,” he said. “I will worship you all my life. You shall be happy every minute. I will stab myself for every tear.”
“Owen,” she said, “there is nice things you say.”
He would have said more, I suppose, but then my mother tapped on the bedroom floor with her shoe. That was her sign that she wanted to speak to me. Every night, at this time, she spoke to me, but if I had gone to sleep, we would speak in the morning, so nothing was lost.
“Yes, Aunty Beth?” asked Marged, and making a sign to Owen.
“Is Huw sleeping?” my mother called down.
Owen turned toward the wall bed.
“Are you sleeping, boy?” he asked me, but so quiet that he would never have had me awake if I had been sleeping. Then I was in a pumpkin jelly, not knowing whether to say yes or no, because I wanted no black looks from either.
“Yes,” I said, but dull, as though I had been sleeping. So are liars made.
“Mama wants to talk to you,” said Owen.
“Yes, Mama,” I called, and they stood looking, hand in hand.
“How are you to-night, my little one?” my mother called back.
“Extra, Mama,” I said. “How are you?”
“Lovely, indeed,” my mother said. “Is your leg paining now?”
“No, Mama, thank you,” I said. “Dr. Richards is going to let me get up soon.”
“I will be up on Saturday,” my mother said, “so I will see you. Are you having plenty to eat with Bronwen?”
“Yes, Mama,” I said.
“But Bronwen is not such a good cook as Mama, is she?” my mother asked me, and there was such longing in her voice that I pretended to cough to have time to rid my throat of the stone.
Without taking time, I saw the months of lying in bed and thinking of her house and children under the care of another woman all go screeching through my mother’s mind. Bronwen was a cook above good cooks and it seemed unfair to say that my mother was better. But my mother was my mother and her voice was full of longing to know that she was missed by us, that she was not forgotten, that she was still Mama, to be wished for and welcomed. Even though a lie had to be said.
“No, indeed, Mama,” I said. “I often think of apple and ginger fool, and plum pie, and meddlar trifle.”
“All of them you shall have,” my mother said, and the sureness in her voice would make you smile to yourself. “Wait you till I am from this old bed, and you shall see what those old pots shall cook. I am going mad here, thinking what I should be doing instead of lying down and nursing this fat old lump of a girl.”
Lovely was my small sister, and Olwen was her name. S
he was often brought to play on my bed while Bronwen and Angharad were making my mother comfortable upstairs, so we were great friends from when she was born.
“Make her say bubbles, Mama,” I said, because she was good at bubbles, and if you pressed her cheeks they blew off and broke in colours.
“Go on, boy,” my mother said, with laughing, “she is sleeping these hours. Go you to sleep, now.”
“Yes, Mama,” I said. “Good night, then.”
“Good night, my little one,” my mother said. “Tell Marged not to put more on the fire.”
So it was, nearly every night. That night I remember well, for while we were speaking, Owen and Marged went hand in hand on tiptoe through to the back, and they were still there after my father came in with Ivor and Bronwen from the choir practice.
“Where is Marged?” asked Bronwen.
“In the back,” I said.
Marged came in looking red, and trying to have her breath without a struggle, as though she had heard them come in, and run. I saw Bronwen look at her with that smile that was not a smile, and go to the cupboard for the plates.
“I wonder should Owen have a fire out there,” Bronwen asked, and rattling plates.
“Yes, indeed,” Marged said. “It is shocking cold there, still.”
“O?” said Bronwen.
“He told me so,” said Marged, but too quickly.
“Never mind, girl,” Bronwen said, and gently. “There is no harm done to go in and find out for yourself. Is there?”
“I have never been,” said Marged, looking at Bronwen with big eyes. “Not once.”
“Never mind if you have,” said Bronwen, smiling properly now. “No matter, girl. Put the baking stone on, will you? I will make milk cakes for supper.”
When supper was ready and Owen was called in by Gwilym, you would never have thought there could have been any feeling between Marged and him. He seemed not to notice her, and he did not exist for her.
But I caught the looks they sent across the table while everybody was eating. Small, quick looks, with everything they were thinking crushed into them, with enough heat to cause blazing. They sat nearer to me than to the others, and since they thought I was asleep they were careless of the gap in the curtains and the eyes that looked from the shadow inside.
This it was that went so near to spoil my mother’s coming down that Saturday.
My father had made all sorts of surprises for her. He had the choir coming up the Hill to sing outside the door, and the new preacher and the colliery manager and Dr. Richards to tea, and all my uncles and aunts, and all Bronwen’s family, and I cannot say how many more, never mind all the village.
Four harpists were coming from other valleys, and fiddlers, and a piano was brought up from the Town, but I knew that afterwards it was going to Bronwen for a present from my father and mother for the first grandchild, Gareth.
Then Idris John started to paint the house from top to bottom, inside and out, and furniture, all new and elegant beyond words, came from Town with the piano.
If you had seen my mother’s face when she came in the house, you would have laughed first and then wanted to cry. She had been carried on the mattress down to Bronwen’s a couple of days before, to be out of the house for Idris to paint the bedrooms. But she thought she was being taken away to have the wooden bedstead riveted, for it was old, and it creaked to make you hold your teeth, and she had sworn to have an axe up there and chop it up and throw it away through the back window for the fire, so sour she was with it. There is a fool an old bedstead can be, too.
I had seen everything from the wall bed until it became time to move me, and then Ivor carried me into the front room. There is beautiful all the new paper and paint looked. The new furniture was in the houses next door, piled up in their front rooms and passages waiting for Idris to finish and the girls to wash down.
When I was carried back next morning I knew the kitchen was ours only by the shape. It was so changed with Idris and his brush.
The ceiling was white, with paint on smooth boards, and the walls were pale blue and yellow with all the rough places and the cracks filled in.
My wall bed was so pretty in yellow it was a pleasure to go back in there and look up at the sun shining upon it as though he was glad to have something his own colour to land on and live with.
All that morning my sisters and Bronwen, and the women from the Hill, and my aunts as they came, all washed and polished and scrubbed to have the house tidy for my mother.
My father was in and out of the kitchen every minute, giving things a little push, or looking at half-made curtains, or frowning at piles of crockery on the floor, with his fingers itching with him, as though impatient to do everything himself, there and then, without waiting.
And when he looked round and found me watching him, he pulled his moustache as though he was ashamed of his feeling, and looked down at the floor and up at me and winked, then.
“Supervising I am, see, my son,” he said, and pulled his coat down at the back and walked out funny to make me laugh.
Well, it was all ready, at last.
Hundreds of people there were outside. The choir came up in a crowd and I could hear them singing as they walked up the Hill, beautiful indeed. Everybody joined in the hymn, the girls cooking out in the back, and Bronwen and Angharad and the others with me in the kitchen, and my aunts and uncles in the front room, and the women upstairs hanging the last curtains.
Everywhere was singing, all over the house was singing, and outside the house was alive with singing, and the very air was song.
My father brought the new preacher in to see me before my mother came from Bronwen’s, and Mr. Nicholas, the colliery manager, and Dr. Richards stood in the doorway because the kitchen was full up with girls and women, all cooking or cutting bread and butter.
“This is Huw, Mr. Gruffydd,” said my father. “Huw, this is the Reverend Mr. Merddyn Gruffydd, the new preacher. Bow your head, my son.”
“Leave your head on the pillow,” said the Reverend Mr. Gruffydd, and he was looking at me, and frowning. “Huw Morgan, never let that light go from your eyes. Never mind how long you are here. Do you want to go out with the other boys?”
“Yes indeed, Mr. Gruffydd,” I said.
“Are you sure you will go from here one day?” asked Mr. Gruffydd, smiling now.
“Yes,” I said. “I am, sir.”
“Good,” said Mr. Gruffydd. “And not a doubt about it, never mind what all the doctors have got to say.”
Of course, that was a cut for Dr. Richards, in fun, mind, so everybody laughed except the doctor.
“The boy will be no better for those ideas, Mr. Gruffydd,” Dr. Richards said. “Nature must take her course.”
“Nature,” said the Reverend Mr. Gruffydd, “is the handmaiden of the Lord. I do remember that she was given orders on one or two occasions to hurry herself more than usual. What has been done before can also be done again, though perhaps not so quickly, indeed. Have you faith, Huw, my little one?”
“Yes, sir,” I said, and I was on fire.
“Good,” said the Reverend Mr. Gruffydd, “you shall see the first daffodil out upon the mountain. Will you?”
“Indeed I will sir,” I said, and his hand was cool on my forehead.
“God bless you, little Huw,” said the Reverend Mr. Gruffydd. “I will come to see you every day. Yes?”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“Thank you, sir,” my father said, and strange he was looking, but the Reverend Mr. Gruffydd only shook his head and waved his hand and smiled at me before he went back in the other room.
The kitchen was quiet when he went. Bronwen was looking after him with her hands all flour with her and the other girls were nodding at one another and looking as though something serious had happened.
“What is wrong, Bron?” I asked her.
“Nothing, boy,” said Bronwen, so I knew there was something. “There is a fine man he is. There is crowds
there will be at Chapel, now then.”
“Yes, indeed,” said Mrs. Idris, and starting again on the potatoes. “He have had a revival wherever he have been to preach.”
“Well, we can do with one here,” said Bronwen, and back she went to her cakes.
All this time there had been singing outside, but not all of them together except for the choruses. But now, because my mother was coming, a shouting and cheering started that made the very pots on the table shake together.
Quick as quick Bronwen and the others finished all they were doing and ran to be from the kitchen when my mother came in.
There is a rush they made, with a rattle of bowls and a clashing cutlery, and all of them trying to wipe down the table at once, and leaving it for something else, and then finding everybody had left it half done, and all of them rushing back again to do it properly, and picking up bits of peel and rubbing flour off the tiles, and putting more coal on the fire, and bumping against one another and laughing, and the cheering growing louder outside, and their faces going straight with them again, and another rush to pat my bedclothes tidy and giving me smiles, and kisses from Bronwen and Angharad, and then they had gone, with a click of the latch and a tapping on the cobbles.
And there was left only the chickens on the spit, and the new furniture, and the cheering, and me.
You will never know how silly is cheering until you lie on your back, and look up at sunlight stretching itself on a bed of yellow paint, and try to do a bit of cheering by yourself.
First you will make a noise in the same key in the back of your throat, but it will sound as though you had an old fish bone by there, so you will try louder.
Then you cannot make up your mind whether it should be Hurray or Hooray or Hurrah or just Ay, and carry the Ay on a few beats till you stop for your breath. If you will have Ay, then you try it louder and louder until you are screaming at the top of your voice, and in the middle of that comes a thought.
There is a fool you look, with your mouth wide open, and your throat hard with effort, and your good voice wasting in Ay. For the sake of making a noise.
So I stopped cheering and listened for somebody coming in, and presently I heard the front door open. Just then, I suppose because they had been told to watch for it, the choir started to sing.