“Your hair is up,” I said.
“This long time,” she said. “Let us hide the trap, quickly.”
“And tie the mare,” I said. “No more slipping home to tell stories.”
“I nearly had my death through her,” she said.
“Did you have trouble that night?” I asked her.
“Trouble?” she said. “Good God, boy, I was strapped till I was in bed for days. But they never found out about you.”
“I was coming over to see your father,” I said, with shame to put me in the ground.
“Good job you stayed home,” she said. “He had a gun waiting for you. Do you know why I asked you to meet me to-day?”
“No,” I said. “Why?”
“I want you to take me to the Town Hall for the acting,” she said, and looking at me with her head down, with her eyes only just to be seen under the brim of her hat, with that in them to make me have my breath short, and turn quickly away.
“What acting?” I asked her, and going up in front of her so that she should not see my face.
“The acting, boy,” she said. “The actors are coming to the Town Hall for two nights. I will never be allowed to mention the word in the house, never mind to go by myself. Mervyn would faint if I asked him and perhaps tell my father. Then he would lock me in. And if I went by myself, perhaps they would stone me in the street.”
“Why do you want to go?” I asked her.
“O, Huw,” she said, and came close to me, like a little girl, with a pouting, and her eyes blinking, but slow, and opening them wide, wide, to show them big and grey, of a deep greyness, with a blessing of softness and something of tears and a smile far down.
I turned from her, with the hammers striking the white hot steel in my middle, and a fire withering my spine and sending tears to my eyes, with reason perished and sense gone, and only sight left, but crippled, so that the greens of trees and grass were a mixing of green without shape, and in the ears, only the turmoil of my blood, and from far away, her voice. You live within yourself as king when you become a man.
“I want to be an actress,” she said.
“Why?” I asked her, and put reins about my voice.
“Because I want it,” she said. “No, why, only I want it. I am sick to the heart with the coal yard and hands black with coal. I want to be an actress.”
“There will be no place at home for you when you go,” I said.
“No matter,” she said. “Not a tear would come if I never saw them again.”
“You will have a hard life,” I said. “And wicked people, too.”
“If Mr. Irving is wicked,” she said, “I will be wicked, too.”
“Who is he?” I asked her.
“Good God, boy,” she said, as though the mountain was going from under us, “who is he? They are going mad to see him up there.”
“Where?” I asked her.
“In London,” she said.
“Are you going to London?” I asked her, and hoping with cold hope that she would say no.
“Yes,” she said. “In time to come. They will come to the stage door for me, too. With flowers.”
“When is the acting?” I asked her, hoping again that I would be safe in work down below.
“Next Wednesday and Thursday, seven o’clock, fourpence, sixpence, and a shilling,” she said. “And you will be in time, so no good to say you are working. I have got a list of your shifts.”
“O,” I said, “making sure, were you?”
“I made well sure,” she said, and laughing. “Will you come? Say yes, Huw.”
How to say no, when she was saying yes in that voice, would tax the will of a shift of prophets. No use to struggle for there was a laziness coming heavily upon me, and all I wanted to do was stretch my muscles and lie near to breathe her scent, to be near her mouth, in reach of the softness of her.
“Yes,” I said.
“O, Huw,” she said, and put an arm slowly about my neck and pulled me down to kiss me, with strength that was savage, and sounds were in her throat, and round movements tormented her body, and the grip of her fingers left bruises for days to come. And I had a madness hot within me that was of the mouth and the fingers and the middle. No man shall know what gods are working in him, then.
The mouth reaches for newer fruit that seems to be near, but never to be tasted. The fingers are intent on searchings to soft places, but the senses are too far from their tips and impatient of their fumblings. And at the middle where the arrow steel is forged, there is a ruination of heat that seems to know, within itself, that coolness will come, only in the hotter blood of woman. There is itch to find the pool, twistings to be free to search, momental miracles of rich anointments, sweet splendours of immersion, and an urgency of writhings to be nearer, and deeper, and closer. In that kissing of the bloods there is a crowding of sense, when breathing is forgotten, muscle turns to stone, and the spinal branch bends in the bowman’s hand as the singing string is pulled to speed the arrow.
And in its flight it reaches to a rarer height than can be found in earth. An anthem rages as a storm, with chanting in poetries that never knew a tongue, and loud, strange music, and crackling fires of primal colours burst behind the sight-blind eyes and myriads of blazing moons rise up to spin for ages in a new-born golden universe of frankincense and myrrh.
Then the tight-drawn branch is weak, for the string has sung its song, and breath comes back to empty lungs and a trembling to the limbs. Your eyes see plainly. The trees are green, just the same as they were. No change has come. No bolts of fire. No angels with a flaming sword. Yet this it was that left the Garden to weeds. I had eaten of the Tree. Eve was still warm under me.
Yet still no bolt, no fire, no swords.
Only the song of a thrush, and the smell of green, and the peace of the mountain side.
And Ceinwen, lying quiet, with a trembling when she reached for breath, and making sounds, then, like the fingers of the wind through the high notes of the harp, with tears passing softly from the corners of her eyes, and her hair, fallen among the grass in bright, curving coils that shone.
She opened her eyes and looked up at me, and she sighed a little bit, and a breath got caught on the crag of a sob, and she swallowed deep to be rid of it.
“O, Huw,” she said, and put limp arms about me. “Sweetheart mine, what did you do?”
“I loved you,” I said.
“Glad I am I never knew,” she said. “Oh, glad I am the first is you. There will never be another. Sweetheart mine, only you.”
“Peach blossom,” I said, and kissed her, and sat, to look down in the Valley.
How green was my Valley that day, too, green and bright in the sun.
“Half-past six, Wednesday,” she said, when the mare was in the shafts and stamping.
“Right,” I said. “By the side of the Town Hall.”
She put the whip in her left hand and looked at me, and O, there was a dear shyness in her that I had never seen before. Innocent you were, my Ceinwen, and innocent you always were. You only were a woman.
“Well?” I said.
She looked down the road.
“Have you lost respect?” she asked me, with a smallness of voice.
I looked at the back of her head, and saw the pale, loose plaits of hair tucked underneath her hat, with stray ends hanging down to the collar, and the sun making the net shine and silvering her veil, and the lobe of her ear red and fat, and dust upon her shoulders. A warmth sang out of her, and in her untidiness, and dustiness, and the bend of head and the little fist upon the whip, I found her dear, dear to me.
“Respect for what?” I asked her.
“For me,” she said.
“Why?” I asked her.
“Well,” she said, “because you loved me.”
What shall a man say, to give a woman ease of mind in so sad a place, is something hard to think of.
“Look,” I said, “if I could claw the soul from my body you should
stamp on it with nails and no sound from me. What is respect? Shall I touch my cap to you?”
“But I am wicked?” she asked me, with tears coming.
“God knows,” I said. “And nothing has been said from by there.”
“But, Huw,” she said, “do you think of me the same as you thought before?”
“O, Ceinwen,” I said, and kissed her with little kisses, “am I a rat with green teeth, then? The minutes will go slow till half-past six on Wednesday. With you, I have seen and heard beyond this life. Shall I think less or more of you because of it?”
“More,” she said, very pretty. “Please, please, please.”
“More,” I said.
“Good-bye, now,” she said, and up in the trap.
“Good-bye,” I said.
“O, Huw,” she said, and sat, hopeless.
“What, now?” I asked her.
“The coal yard,” she said. “Come and give me another good big kiss to last, is it?”
Up I went in the springy trap, and if I never move from by here, I kissed her to leave a mark.
“Mm,” she said. “Good-bye, now.”
“Good-bye,” I said.
A lovely smile, and a crack of the whip, and a moving of blue in a blowing of dust.
Home, in a dream lived backwards, me.
Time moved on the end of Ivor’s pick all day on Wednesday. Punch, punch, punch, said the pick, and I was savage glad to send the lumps roaring down the chute, hasty to slide down in the smelly darkness and lift coal with the strength of giants into the trams, and push them loaded along the rails and off. Every lump was a few moments nearer her, every tram minutes less, each punch of the pick like the tick of a clock, every lump out of the seam a foot nearer to her in a tunnel of time. But a long, long old day, indeed.
But on top of the mountain, in my best grey suit, picking a few little flowers for her, I remembered nothing of it, but I sang to make the birds sit quiet and tip their heads and lift an eye. Good manners have the birds. If you are happy and your voice goes high in a song, they will find seats to be near, and no noise in the finding, and quietness till you have done.
The Town Hall was called Town Hall only because it was the only hall in the town. Of bricks, but without thought. Many a farmer would have thought it shame to have it for a barn. Good for the breeding of rats, the sticking of notices, and the sittings of justices.
Ceinwen held my hand tight when we went in, and I was careful to have two shilling ones near the door, in case. We waited till the place was full, but even then, we only went to our seats when the caretaker put out the lamps, just before the curtain was dragged open, and stuck, another drag, and stuck again, and a wait, and quiet coming, and somebody behind the stage whispering that there was always this bloody palaver with the rag, and another good pull, and then we were off, and Ceinwen squeezing her shoulders from happiness.
Shakespeare we had, from members of the company, all doing a bit from the plays. Hamlet had a cold in his nose, and so did Richard, and Macbeth, and Shylock. I am willing to swear the same man played them all. But very good. Ophelia was fat, and so was Cordelia, and Lady Macbeth, and Portia. But very good, too. And pretty, but a bit fat. If she worked in a colliery God knows how she would have a bath. A good sit in the river, I expect.
Plenty of clapping from the front for a small girl who played Juliet, and then put on grey hair and spoke the lines of the old nurse. Roars of laughing, even when he was saying nothing, for Falstaff, who was having trouble with a pillow stuffed underneath his tunic. I could see the stripes on it.
Then a drama, by the entire company, Falstaff said to us, of actors straight from Drury Lane and the Grand Theatre, Milan, and any doubts of his veracity, please to see the management, and thanking us for our kind attention and beg to remain our most obliged, and respectful. His name was Mr. Raymonde Ffoulkes.
“There is elegant,” Ceinwen said, in whispers, and near to a faint with joy to be there, but so serious she felt with the acting, that she might have been in Chapel.
We got into something, then, about a lighthouse, and everybody going mad because no light was in it, and a big ship coming home from Cape Town, full of wounded soldiers and beautiful nurses. Falstaff was the lighthouse keeper and Ophelia was his daughter, she in long tails of hair that she pulled with grief, or whatever it was, and he with his hand to his forehead, and stamping up and down to put the candles out in the stage lights, and a long taper coming from the sides, each time, to light them up again. We would have had more interest if we could have had a look at the lighthouse or the ship, but they were out in the sides, and we had to think we saw the villain in the rowing boat. He had put the light out, Falstaff said, because his half-brother, who had been wounded in the war, was coming home to claim his inheritance, but if he drowned, there would be only one claimant to the title and estates. So out went the light, and quick, no matter about wounded soldiers and a fig for beautiful nurses.
Then Falstaff went for the Royal Navy.
Swimming.
Then the villain came on, spitting on his hands from rowing, and wiping sweat from the work, and shivering in the storm, never mind that I had to loose my hand from Ceinwen’s because they were so wet with hotness. Hissing we were, and holloaing to blow him back in the water again, but never mind, what did he do but pitch in to Ophelia and give her a couple of good ones and put her out, and every man in the hall on his feet with his coat half off, and ready to go up there and pick marrow hot from his hip bones. And Ophelia lying flat in the middle of the stage like a bundle of washing.
“I would like him to do that to me,” Ceinwen said, with sweetness and close in my ear, “only just once. I would kick the drums from his ears, son of the devil’s own dam, he is.”
But then, before the Royal Navy had chance to show himself, there was sound of a hymn from outside, and a hitting on doors, and shouts, with alleluias and swearing mixed, with a hushing of hishts from those in the hall, and scrapings of feet and scoldings of chairs, but the hymn was louder, from hundreds, and the shouts not to be denied.
“Come you,” I said, and pulled Ceinwen out into the lobby.
“O, Huw,” she said, “is it more trouble for me?”
“For me, too,” I said. “Wait you.”
In the little hall Falstaff was sweeping coppers and silver into a leather bag and very quick about it, too. The double doors were rocking under kicks and the pressure of shoulders. The shutters in two windows were having the attentions of crowbars and one of them burst as Falstaff flew back along the passage to the back of the stage, with holes in both his stockings and a slipper that flapped.
“Come on,” I said, “follow him down the passage. I will stay and see nobody comes after you.”
She kissed me, a moment, nothing, the blowing of a feather, not even the opening of a bud in the time of man. Yet in that moment I lived again our time together, but though I saw and felt the things of earth so clearly, that other world that I had seen, that other music I had heard, that universe that I had created of myself, that was my own, was far, far beyond me, and I yearned to know it, and have it again, wide and strange and beautiful, about me.
Off she went, and I turned to watch the door.
Then I saw Dai Bando and Cyfartha Lewis coming out in the hall, and looking at the door that was bulging now, and cracking in the panels. With them were other men, all crowding out to see what the noise was about.
“Dai,” I said, and touched his arm. “How about the back way?”
“Well, indeed to God,” he said, and smiling to show his tooth, “there is good to see you, boy. Have you been having a pennyworth of this rum shanks in by here?”
“Yes,” I said, “what is the crowd outside for?”
“Chapel,” he said. “There was a hell of a row because they let the actors have this place. The chapels were holding special prayer meetings to-night against it. Raising hell out there, look. Eh, Cyfartha?”
“And likely to be a tid
y bit more in by here, Dai, my little one,” Cyfartha said, and buttoning back his cuffs. “So I will clear my decks, like that one in by there.”
“Let us go through the back,” I said.
“I am going out the front,” Dai said, and pulled his bowler hat on tight. “I have paid money like a Christian. I went in and sat like two Christians and I am going out, as I came in, through the front, like a Christian. Eh, Cyfartha?”
“Christians, both, Dai,” Cyfartha said. “Front, us.”
“Will I come with you?” I asked Dai, with planks falling from the door and faces to be seen outside.
“Come on, boy,” Dai said. “Come between us. When my right is busy with a chin, please to put the good toe of your boot to their shins, eh, Cyfartha?”
“But gentle, Huw,” Cyfartha said, and very solemn. “Gentle, not to hurt. If you break a bone, see, a weight it is to the conscience. A pity, indeed.”
“Ready now,” said Dai, and buttoning his coat, and a coldness coming to make his eyes pale. Frightening to see, for I remembered the muscle that in clothes looked nothing.
Then they were in, pressed headlong by the crowd outside, and a shout went up from inside and out, and faces were on top of us, hot and red, with staring eyes, and mouths wide with shouting about hell and sinners and the devil.
Dai’s fists swung one, two, and two men fell sideways, senseless, under the feet of the crowd. Cyfartha hit his lovely long left flat upon the nose of a tall young man in a square bowler hat. The hat went to the roof. I never saw where the tall young man went. A fat blackcoat with ginger side whiskers had a fist in Dai’s coat collar. Dai’s head came up sharp under blackcoat’s jaw, and I saw it slip out of place. Brown cap had come to fist Dai a good one on the ear. I kicked for touch in the middle of his shin and as his teeth clicked in pain, Dai’s elbow came up to knock a couple out.
Then the lamp fell as a billet of wood hit it, and we were in raging darkness.
A hand gripped me like the Devil’s tongs, and carried me in a forward rush to the door where the sky showed lighter than the darkness of the lobby. Black heads were moving there with crowds more down the steps outside, but with Dai on one side, and Cyfartha on the other, using heads and elbows, fists, knees, and boots, with screams of pain and sharp flat hits of fists on flesh, and gross knocks of boots on bones, and the grunts of strength used full, we came to cooler air, but still squeezed close in the shouting crowd, and having their breath in the face, and the smell of them with tobacco and sweat.