“Yes,” the crowd shouted, and other things.
“It is my proud duty, to-night, in this hall,” he said, with a slow sweeping of his grey bowler hat, “where I am known to you all, every one of you, Eliel John, me, and my father, Enoch John, before me, always at the Post Horn, and no man have ever come in for a drink, thirsty and gone away empty, if no money to pay. Eliel John, me, and friends we are, all of us, and I would stand to the face of the devil and tell him. I love you all and you all love me.”
“Yes,” the crowd shouted, and some rudeness, too.
“So in this hall to-night, we are, all of us, good ones all, and working for our money,” said Eliel John, coming to cry and his mouth like a cut in a ball under pressure from a thumb. “No thanks to anybody, only our work, and us. They can all go to hell, and I will fight anybody who says not.”
His grey bowler hat fell from his hand, and he almost fell from the ring, but the arms propping his bottom saved him, and finding support there, he thought himself back in his seat, and sat, and more men had to come to help the others, with clapping and shouting from everybody, and Eliel looking about with tears, and bending his head left and right to give thanks, as though throned.
Then Cyfartha rang the bell again, and shouted to Eliel to call the names for the fight. It took Eliel seconds to know he had forgotten what he had stood up to say, so Cyfartha went to shout in his ear, and the cattle were shouting to be heard in the south.
“Gentlemen,” Eliel said, still sitting, “twenty-five rounds. Dai Bando, Shoni Mawr. A needle, it is, with a prize from the hat, and give plenty. Ten to one I am giving on Shoni to win.”
The arms under him were tired and he sat back too heavily, and down he went on top of half a dozen as sober as he, with a shouting of laughing from all. Only two got up. Eliel was out, twenty stone of him, and not a breath in him, lying over three men with his mouth open and his face gone dark.
Cyfartha rang again, and Dai went out to touch Shoni’s hand, stepping away to square up, with smoke coming from the oil lamps above them, and light having it hard to come through the shifting blueness to do its orange work upon them.
Shoni’s yellow eyes were fast on Dai’s. Bent in the legs and flat on his feet he went round and round, fists high, and moving only a bit. Dai was moving with his body, and sliding, one foot flat, up on the toes with the other.
Shoni’s left straightened to show a ball of muscle behind his shoulder, but Dai’s head moved, and his right shoulder swung forward to dig a hole in Shoni’s fatness, and his left came over Shoni’s shoulder to fill his eyes.
Nothing to be heard in the noise of voices.
Dai was following Shoni, moving slowly, watching.
Shoni was blinking one yellow eye, for the other was lost in tears and blood, with flesh swelling above and below. Dai’s left straightened in a one, two, three, as quick as you could see, all on Shoni’s nose.
Shoni swung his right and even in all the noise I heard it crack on Dai’s head among his grey bristles, and Dai bent under it, as with the stroke of a hammer.
Shoni saw a hole in Dai’s guard just below the jaw, and pulled back to brace himself, but in the moment even when his muscles were tight to pack behind the punch, Dai’s left hit him full upon the mouth to take him off balance, and as he fell back, a right hook had him neat on the chin and the ring shook as he fell flat.
Dai came back to us for a lift of the bottle, and stood looking at Shoni’s pair of men trying to put life in him. But Dai’s punching had done its work well. His shoulders, next to me, were like pale walls of stone shaped smooth by hammer and chisel into roundnesses, and lengths of broad cord, all of it hot, living muscle, yet hard to believe, even so close to the eyes.
All the time the cattle bawled, and money spoke from fist to fist in bets. Then Shoni was on his feet, dripping with water, and his face a mash of blood and bruise, one yellow eye alight, and fists up ready.
Cyfartha rang the bell again.
In went Dai, quickly, working over on Shoni’s blind side, but Shoni had taken the advice from his men and stood his full six foot, far from Dai’s left, out of danger from his right. They looked at each other for moments, still waiting, thinking what to do, while the cattle nosed the empty manger and tramped and called in greedy rage.
Dai knelt, not quite to the floor, but to have spring in his knees, and came up, left straight from the shoulder, both feet off the ground, seeming for a moment to hang in the air, legs wide apart, body upright, left fist in Shoni’s bruises, right pulled back ready for the cross.
But Shoni took the left with only a shake of the head, and as Dai landed on his toes, a short right caught him on the jaw and hit him three paces off, flat, and looking to be out.
Willie ran with the bucket and I with the bottle. Willie made a knee and pulled him upright while I pulled his mouth open to push the bottle neck inside. Dai opened his eyes, but no light was in them, and he looked round him as one who wakes from sleep.
“Up, Dai,” Willie was shouting, “up, man. You have got him, Dai, my little one. Keep on your feet. Leave flying to the angels, man. Got him, you have. Go in and kill.”
But Dai never heard a word, I am sure. I was giving him the towel as fast as I could and watching for life to come back in his eyes. Life there was, but strange, as from far away, without light.
Without a ring from Cyfartha, and no word from one of us, Dai pushed Willie away from him and stood, pulling at his trews and hitting one fist into the other, ready.
We ran to the corner as the bell rang but before we were there they were into one another, and I turned, with fear to look.
Dai was bleeding from the mouth, and a right had smashed his nose as I turned my head. Shoni was all shoulders, with his fists swinging from bent, tight arms, and as the fists landed, blood flew. Dai was standing with his head down, bent from the waist, with his fists against his chest, doing nothing.
Then he shook from top to toe, and turned to the side, trying to see through the blood that blinded him, but Shoni sent in a hook that had him on his heels with his hands going out to find something solid to hold.
Now hear the cattle.
Shoni looked at his corner and something of a smile came to change the look of his head, for he was happy, and ready to enjoy the rest of it with the cattle, taking his time, choosing the places to put his punches, in no hurry to come to the finish, for he knew, and the cattle knew, that Dai would stay down only when sense had left him. So from then on, see, good sport.
But Dai put out a hand and touched Shoni’s forearm. Only a touch, only enough to tell him that he was touching Shoni’s right forearm, and to give a marker where his head would be. As I watched him in wonder, his right swung over Shoni’s shoulder, and the knuckles grazed Shoni’s only good eye, cutting flesh away as though with a razor, leaving the bone white and filling, then, with blood, and Dai sending in a left to follow that missed by inches.
Shoni bent away with his hands to his face and blood dripping through his fingers. Dai came toward him, left arm out, not with a fist, but with fingers stretched to feel. Again he touched Shoni’s shoulder, and quickly the fingers felt his face, and again the right came over, landing fair upon the muscle of the jaw, and Shoni went over sideways through the ropes.
I was in the ring and over to Dai before he had dropped his hands, but behind him, I went, for the eyes were still with nothing in them, and the fingers trembling to feel for Shoni’s flesh, and the right arm ready with its ram of pain.
“Dai,” I shouted, close in his ear, “Dai. It is Huw. Drop your hands. It is finished.”
“Finished?” he said, and coming to look at me. “Am I out, then?”
“No, no,” I said, and busy with the bottle. “Spit now, Dai. You have won, man.”
He spat, and his only tooth fell out in a froth of blood, and hopped across the boards.
Cyfartha came running to push me yards, taking Dai by the shoulders and holding him close.
“Dai,” he was crying, with tears, “Dai. Cyfartha, I am, my little one.”
Dai’s hands patted Cyfartha, with the short thicknesses of his fingers held apart, as they might have beaten against the breast of his mother.
“Will we carry him?” I asked Cyfartha.
“Yes,” he said. “Let us have him home, quick.”
“Did I give a good fight?” Dai said, and looking up at the roof.
“You had him out,” Willie said. “Still out, he is.”
“Good,” Dai said, and quiet as a cat, with the life of him hot behind his quietness. “Something have come to my eyes, Cyfartha.”
But Cyfartha was crying against the corner post, so Willie and me joined hands to carry Dai to our stool, and empty a couple of buckets over him.
A journey not to be forgotten, that one over the mountain, after the fight, and Dai with a hand on my shoulder, blinded now by spirits to take away the pain, and Cyfartha quiet drunk and savage against the world.
With the whiteness of the moon cold upon us we went, but I was colder to think of the mind behind me that kept a hand fast on my shoulder with the grip of one in fear of the Pit.
“I will have him,” Cyfartha said, when we got in sight of the village.
“Let me see you safe home,” Willie said, but fearing, and his eyes big.
“I am with eyes,” Cyfartha said, savage in the voice, and ready to hit. “Go from here.”
“Good night, now,” I said. “I will see you to-morrow morning.”
“Go to hell,” Cyfartha said. “You will see to-morrow. Shall Dai?”
So home Willie and me went, and Cyfartha holding Dai to him and talking to him as a mother.
Everybody said Dai’s blindness was punishment for his wicked ways, and because I was there, I was thought to be part of a scheme, planned by God, in His mercy, to teach sinners a lesson in the workings of the Will.
Of course, the Split was blamed too, and we lost nearly twenty people who feared that something might be happening to them for staying away from a proper house of prayer to go and pray in an old stable.
Cyfartha took Dai to Cardiff to see a doctor, but some gentle little thing at the back of his eyes had been ruined by the punch, and though he came to see more and more as the weeks went, he never saw his share again.
So between them, with their savings, they bought the Three Bells, and lived there, Dai to serve all day, Cyfartha working his shift as usual and helping behind the flap at night.
Only once, in all their years together, Dai left his chair in the bar to go out and down to the mine with his working clothes on.
Once, only once.
A time to live again, indeed.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
I DID WELL in those years I had as master carpenter. From all over the Valley they came to me for doors and frames and solid works in wood. Our back at Bron’s, and behind here, was like a woodyard at one time. Four men I had, and a couple of boys, to learn, in the end.
I think we were happy, then.
I wonder is happiness only an essence of good living, that you shall taste only once or twice while you live, and then go on living with the taste in your mouth, and wishing you had the fullness of it solid between your teeth, like a good meal that you have tasted and cherished, and look back in your mind to eat again.
Two men were after Bron with flowers and sweets. Matthew Harries and Gomer James were a couple of good men, indeed, and now that I think of them, it was something to the credit of Bron to have two like them after her, though we never thought so at the time, of course.
How strange is the way we live.
Bron and me had lived in that house for years, until the boys had grown out of stockings, before we had a single serious talk.
Ever after that time when I went to court we had been deep friends, but whenever the talk seemed to be nearing rocks, I went from the room or thought to speak of something else.
Firm I made my mind not to be cause of more worry to her, and firm I was.
Bron was firm, too, in her own way, and because I was working hard, and the boys took her time, there were only a few minutes in all those weeks of days, when we were alone together and quiet enough to be able to think.
It is only then, when there is time to let the mind play free, that trouble comes to you. Even in the middle of sawing a plank, I often thought of Ceinwen, but she had gone and nobody knew where. Many times I went over to see Mervyn, but he knew nothing, and seemed shamed to speak of her. Then they went to open a coalyard somewhere and nothing was left of the family, so all I could have of Cienwen was in my mind, and I kept her there as men keep libraries of rare books, seldom to be touched but happy to know you have got.
Then came the night when Matt Harries asked Bron to marry him.
I came home from supper with my mother and found Bron in the rocking-chair, sewing forgotten, looking at the door, for as I opened it she looked straight at me.
“Well,” I said.
“Well,” she said.
“No supper to-night, then?” I asked her, for the table was with flowers.
“Supper in plenty,” she said, and smiled shy. “How would you like Mrs. Bronwen Harries?”
Now that the question was with me flat, I had feelings of ease to think that I could see her go with nothing only sorrow, for she seemed to have my youngness with her, and all my earliness, that it was pain to lose. No longer had I jealousy, for I knew that the world of Bron was not my world, that it would be a foreign place, and I a stranger, unhappy there.
“If you like him better than Gomer,” I said. “Good.”
“Would you be glad to send me off, Huw?” she asked me, but with nothing in her voice.
“No,” I said, and busy with a thread in the tablecloth, “I will be sorry to see you beside any other man, though.”
“Why?” she asked me.
“It seems wrong for another man to have life near you,” I said, “or to be busy in your mind for another.”
“Why?” she asked again, but with warmness coming in her voice.
But it is beyond the reach of man to tell why, and so I felt, then.
For as men have fists and heads to defend themselves, so women have a gentleness of silence about them, a barrier built of things of the spirit, of pain, of quiet, of helplessness, of grace, of all that is beautiful and womanly an equal part, given to them because they are women in defense of their womanness. And this barrier a man will find against him to turn aside his male attack, keep his arms pinned, stop his mouth, cool his eyes, reduce his heat and restrain his idle imaginings. This barrier it is that women who are women keep always at a height, coming from behind it only when, with knowledge and in light, they trust. You shall see it in their eyes.
And I knew that Bronwen trusted me at my word, but Matthew Harries she trusted as a man. The two were different, and the difference caused me hurt, and yet was a loveliness in itself, for there is honour in a trusting upon the word alone, and a strange delight in thinking that only a word will hold so much in check.
“You are Bronwen,” I said. “No other reasons.”
“The law is against us marrying,” Bron said, with quiet.
I looked at her, and found her eyes full of the shinings of tears and her head on the side, gently, as though she would bless me, and her mouth soft, to shake, and her hands tight together in her lap.
“Long we have been together, Bron,” I said, “and God love the dear day. But never mind about the law, it would be wrong. You are not for me as wife, and I am not for you.”
“So I knew,” she said, with tears, “but you are sweet comfort to me only to have you near. Like Ivor you are, see, and in you I see him. In your voice I hear him. Your eyes are like his. You put your boots on as he did. Tie your tie. Put your hair.”
Then I knew that there can be sin in the world, and sin so vile that words will not dishonour themselves by coming forward to describe it.
I had thought our silence, our fe
eling to be the same, born of the same fear, a fear of touch that might lead to union.
But now I was filled with ashes to know that Bron had been keeping the barrier at its strongest only to turn me aside, for she had known what was in my mind, and had suffered it only because in me she saw my brother, and the likenesses were dear to her, and she longed for them, and was brave, without fear, ready to withstand what was really me only to have those little things in me that were in the likeness of Ivor.
O, the love of woman is a glorious thing, and strange in its ways of work.
I thought of her looking at me tying my boots, and seeing Ivor, and watching me do my hair, and seeing Ivor, and hearing me sing, and the pains of knives in her to think of Ivor, and all the time she looked and watched in hungriness, I had thought her to be thinking as I was.
Sin, a blackness of sin, to be thrown in a cess of disgust. Iscariot and his rope were near me as I sat there that night.
“Bron,” I said, and not seeing her, “you know why I was shamed?”
“Yes,” she said, with her smile that was not a smile. “But no harm.”
“Why?” I asked her. “Supposing I had been a fool?”
She looked into the fire and there was quietness, except the kettle whistling to tell us that he was too hot, and please to take him off, or he would burst and rust the stove. So I took him off, and knelt beside Bron, with warmth for her, but with coolness in me, and strange, restful it was, to take her hand and feel for her only the love of the heart.
“Well,” she said, soft, and with regret, but with smiling that was half of crying, “I suppose I would have been a fool, too.”
“For Ivor’s sake?” I said.
“Who is to know?” she said. “For Ivor, yes, to think him back again. But I was sorry for you, too. So lonely. And always so kind to me. It is a little thing to do for some.”
“Then why did you know it would be wrong to marry?” I asked her, in wonder.