The Making of William Edwards; or, The Story of the Bridge of Beauty

'Well, sir,' said Mr. Morris, 'I cannot enforce his lordship's commands without legal warrant. But had I known all I have heard since I came hither, I should have come provided with a warrant for your arrest, Mr. Pryse. And I warn you the reckoning will come sooner than you expect.'

Much sooner!

He walked out of the farmhouse with head erect and defiant, as if he had won a victory. He bade Morgan pay his myrmidons and follow; then rode down hill baffled, but not wholly defeated. He had not disgorged a penny, had added other rents as he came along to the hoard he was carrying away. Warrant, indeed! He would soon be beyond reach of warrants!

'Nay,' he shouted back with a snarl, 'threatened men live long;' but before he reached the level, some sense of ungratified revenge must have stung him, for he put spurs to his horse, and dashed on, splashing through the swollen brook, and turning the corner to the ford – not the high-road – as if pursued by a troop of demons.

Blinded by his own evil passions, exulting in his escape, yet alarmed by the sound of hoofs behind him, he spurred his horse to the uncertain ford in the same hot haste, seeing nothing but his own need to cross.

His follower heard a shriek, but reached the river's brink only in time to see a swirling mass of something far down the rain-filled river.

Mr. Pryse had gone to meet the Cambria's boat in other fashion than he contemplated.

His spurs entangled in the stirrups, his pockets and saddle-bags weighted with ill-gotten coin, horse and man had gone together.

A Welshman in a coracle[13 - An oval wicker boat covered with hide, with only a single seat, as used by the ancient Britons, and by the Welsh far into the present century.] called out to the ferryman at Taff's Well Ferry, and he to the Cambria's men rowing up-stream, and amongst them they got a panting, struggling, half-dead horse ashore, to find what had been Mr. Pryse underneath, clutching at the turned saddle and bags with the grip that never relaxes – the grip of death.

Cover him over. Let the Preventive-service men, chasing the other boat, fight with pistol and cutlass for the possession of the dead, his gold, and his incriminating papers, whilst the smart Preventive cutter in the bay boards the short-handed Cambria, and tows her confiscated prize into port, the dead man's strong box included. Little recks the drowned man what becomes of his hoard. He has gone to his final reckoning with a Lord he had forgotten, a Lord no man can cheat or deceive.

Intelligence of his retributive death comes to the rejoicing family at the farm with a sobering shock, but nobody affects to lament. And all over his lordship's wide domain, oppressed men breathe freer for this one man's death.

'Man deliberates, but God delivers,' is said with bated breath by more than sententious Ales, whilst Mrs. Edwards insists that his death is a judgment for his strictures on her lost husband.

And whilst the unhonoured remains of the fraudulent agent are committed to the earth, in Cardiff, with no mourner but his housekeeper, the vicar of Eglwysilan reads out the banns once more for Evan and Ales, and for Rhys Edwards and Cate Griffiths also.

Great is the bustle of preparation. There is money in possession and hope in the future.

There is no need to ask for contributions at the 'bidding,' though the invited guests are many.

The new room William built is being fitted up with somewhat more regard to health and decency than has been common hitherto. Cate is bringing to her bridegroom more than had been looked for – dowlas sheets and blankets, spun and woven under their own cottage roof, and a good flock bed and pillows from the same source. Then she had not been idle, and if under-linen was not worn in those days in that humid climate, she had a fair supply of flannel, and of linsey-woolsey for gowns and aprons, all of her own spinning. Ay, and she had stockings knitted ready to assume with her new dignity.

The cottage at Castella has long been occupied by other tenants. Mr. Morris offers Evan a small farm between Caerphilly and Cardiff, on very easy terms. The goods he had bought and paid for have been sold, but fresh are furnished readily; and Robert Jones generously conveys the long-hoarded household goods of Ales to her new home, without fee or guerdon, and, with them, a winter store of peat and culm as a wedding gift.

Both at Owen's cottage and the farm the women are busy as bees, baking and boiling for the wedding feast, for which Thomas Williams sets up long plank tables in the meadow that slopes to the foot of the hill, the break-neck ascent to the farm being a consideration on such an occasion.

For the brides are supposed unwilling to be wed, or their friends to part with them, and there is racing and chasing to recover the runaway brides, and mock contests to obtain possession of them, in which the mountain ponies play their parts well. Then, the brides being captured, there is the headlong race to the church, which bodes ill to any unwary pedestrian they may meet. It is a remnant of old barbaric custom not to be dispensed with, and all the youths and maidens, far and wide, join in the race. Scarcely less noisy is the return, when the ceremony is over, and each bride is mounted behind her husband, Rhys and Cate taking the precedence.

Be sure they bring appetites to the feast, where huge joints of boiled beef are matched by piles of smoking potatoes and turnips, the brown-jacketed esculents being as yet dainties to the multitude. Then there are great pitchers of cwrw da and buttermilk for thirsty throats. And if there be a deficiency of glass and cutlery, according to our notions, all is as it should be to the feasters, who are to the manner born, and not fastidious, and who fling their contributions to the feast into the earthen bowls with right goodwill.

Something much more important gave grace to the festive occasion, and that was the presence of a Welsh harper, one of the decaying race of bards, who sang them songs of Arthur and Llewellyn, and twanged his harp for lively dances on the greensward when the boards were cleared, and might be held accountable for more than one match decided that day. Certainly Thomas Williams obtained Jonet's shy promise to marry him in the spring if her mother would consent; and even Davy struck up an acquaintance with the niece of Robert Jones, that was likely to lead to something more in the end.

It was quite an exceptional gathering, for not a drop of rain fell the whole day to mar the entertainment, and, short though it was, a good round frosty moon offered its shining lamp to light the middle-aged couple and their escort to their new home beyond Caerphilly, and to make even the crossing of the Taff safe to the contingent from the mountains beyond. All had 'gone merry as a marriage bell.'

And here my story might be supposed to end; but for my hero – and I count William Edwards a hero – a new era was about to dawn.

I have indicated that mines of coal and iron were being worked in Glamorganshire, but that the want of roads and bridges for conveyance and communication retarded the development of its untold mineral resources. Then, the hard nature of the coal already dug unfitted it, except as culm, for household use or smelting purposes in such furnaces as existed, where the fuel was principally charcoal.

But about this time experiments were being made to test its utility, and Mr. John Morris, who for years had gone geologising among the mountains, was one of the first to suggest its feasibility. He had made experiments on a small scale, but Mr. Pryse had thrown impediments in the way of smelting on a larger basis in the neighbourhood of Cardiff, where the river and the sea were close for conveyance if his scheme succeeded.

'It was too near the Castle. His lordship would have no reeking furnaces so close to his residence. There was no land for sale,' etc. etc.

Mr. Morris was not to be put down by Mr. Pryse. He had applied, not to the old Viscount, but to his son and heir, who was not hoodwinked by Mr. Pryse, and cordially seconded the proposal. The old Viscount was even then on his deathbed. The succession of the new one, shortly after Mr. Pryse was committed to his narrow cell, left Mr. Morris free to act.

The day before the double wedding he explained his views to William Edwards, and made to him a proposition.

So it happened that, whilst Rhys and the rest were making merry, William was half the time lost in thought, and one or other rallied him on his unsociability, as they considered it.

He was simply considering his ability to undertake the erection of the smelting furnaces John Morris had in view. He had not much doubt of his own power to accomplish anything any other man could do, or had done, if the opportunity to study what had been previously done was afforded him. But here something was required differing from aught that had gone before, or with which he was acquainted.

Mr. Morris had given him time for mature deliberation. He had great faith in the capacity of the self-taught genius, and still more in his indomitable determination to overcome difficulties.

Yet books he had none that would afford the information he needed. He had done what he could to supply the defects of his education, thanks to the vicar. But he was still 'Cymro uniaith,' a Welshman of one language; and, though the literature of Wales certainly dates back to the twelfth century, and is said to date back to the sixth, its ancient legends, ballads, and poems would not instruct him how to build furnaces which should convert the hard Welsh coal into the smelter's slave.

If there were English books on the subject, he was ignorant, and could not have read them had such been laid before him.

He was not given to waste his time in unprofitable regrets.

Before any one else was astir he was on the road northward to Merthyr Tydvil, bent on examining the process of iron-smelting as there carried on. The name of John Morris procured him ready admission to the works. But, although they had been in existence for a couple of centuries, and the ancient forests had been denuded of their giant oaks to supply their furnaces, they had as yet no furnace that would fuse the ore with coal alone, and the oak trees were growing scarce.

William came away shaking his head, and muttering as he strode along: 'Sure, if those be their smelting furnaces, there do be one as good at the Castle. They do be wanting a stronger blast if they employ coal. It will be a job to construct furnaces that will burn the stone-coal Mr. Morris be saying gives such great heat with neither flame nor smoke. But I'm bound to have a try what I can be doing. Sure, I'm not willing to give in without a try, look you!'

And in this frame of mind he returned home to make calculations and sketches, and to think out the matter, walking to and fro in front of the house, with his head bent down and his hands behind him.

'Idling,' his mother called it. Rhys had grown wiser.

''Deed, mother, Willem do be having his "thinks." Best be leaving him alone.'

'But he do not even be knitting, look you!'

'Never mind, mother fach; he do be "studdying," as he do call it. We work with our hands; Willem do work with his head – yes, yes.'

The following day he was away again, much to his mother's discomfort, as his silent and wandering mood had always been.

If she had followed, she might have tracked him to his old storehouse of knowledge, Caerphilly Castle, and far down a crumbling flight of stone steps to a curious vault below the level of the moat, and, beneath that marvel of marvels, the reft, overhanging tower.

He had gathered, by inquiry from the vicar and others, that here had anciently been a furnace for the smelting of metals for coinage and other purposes; and that it was supposed to have been employed, during a siege, for melting lead to pour from the battlements upon the besiegers; and, further, that either the besiegers or some traitor within contrived to let in a jet of water from the moat upon the molten metal, causing the terrific explosion which rent the tower from top to bottom, and left the strongly-built half hanging eleven feet out of the perpendicular, as a testimony to future ages.

But it was not of battles or sieges William was thinking, unless it might be his own conflict with a difficulty. He was there to examine the ancient furnace, with no one to talk or interrupt, and to found his own theories thereupon.

In a very short time Mr. Morris had his answer.

'Yes, sir, I think I can undertake your work.'

It was a bold undertaking for a farmer's son, self-taught, and only twenty years of age.

CHAPTER XXII.

A BLIND INSTRUCTOR