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

'Ah, yes,' he would say to his wife, 'this is all my doing. I told Rhys I would be the greater man. Yes, he must own it now, if he would not then. Look at my wonderful bridge. It will stand for ever.'

He was saying something of the kind one morning, when his first-born, a boy he had named David after his brother, was about eighteen months old. He had the child on his knee at the time.

Elaine had a shuddering dread upon her whenever she heard his boastful words.

'Yes, William dear,' she said soberly, 'we know your skill is great, but I wish you would not boast of the stability of your bridge so often. We, as well as the bridge, are in the hands of the Almighty!'

He put the child down hastily and rose to his feet. 'Surely, Elaine, you are not going to join the croakers? Rhys told me the other day, "Not to hold my head so high, for pride was sure to have a fall." Sure, I have a right to be proud if any one has.'

'If?' murmured Elaine under her breath; but he caught the doubtful word, and, snatching at his hat, strode out of the house angrily.

A thick mantle of snow covered hill and valley, against which the whitewashed houses looked grey and dingy.

'It do be thawing fast,' said Davy to him as they met at the gate, he with a spade over his shoulder. 'I do hope the rain will be keeping off till the snow be all gone. But I don't be liking the looks of the clouds in the north-west.'

'Why not?' questioned William sharply.

Davy hesitated. 'Well, if the rain do come upon the melting snow, we shall be having heavy floods.'

'Well, and what then?' snappily.

''Deed, and I do be always thinking of the bridge when the floods come.'

'Pouf! the bridge is safe if a hundred floods come.' And on he went, ruffled, but wrapped in self-opinionated vanity. He had forgotten George Whitfield and his Master then.

Nevertheless, he went to take a look at the bridge and the river, on his way to the new ironworks, where his first furnace was already at work.

'Ah, well,' he thought, 'the water is high; but, pouf! that is no flood.'

Towards afternoon a thin rain began to fall and liquefy the melting snow. As the men were leaving work, Llwyd came up to him with an anxious face and whispered, 'Master, the river do be desperately full, and if' —

William looked as if he could have struck his faithful monitor to the earth.

Yes, the river was rising and racing through the three arches with the swiftness of a torrent, surcharged with hay and straw, brushwood and mould, washed downward in its course, but they swept well under the bold archways and swirled away in eddies beyond.

'There can be no danger. Those piers are firm enough,' he muttered, as if to convince himself as well as Llwyd.

Dusk came down and blotted out the scene. In turning away he came upon Rhys, whose gloomy face it was well he could not see.

Llwyd and Davy too were there, with other watchers who had helped to rear the bridge.

'Tell Elaine I shall stay with Llwyd to-night,' said William to Davy. It was his first note of apprehension. Towards midnight he said, 'If the rain ceases there can be no danger.'

But the rain did not cease. As the night fled and the morning hours advanced, the winds came howling and tearing like demons down the Taff Valley, driving the pelting rain before them in a mad hurricane, fighting for mastery alike with tall green pines and the bare boughs of elms and gnarled oaks.

Gradually, as lapping waters undermined rocks and rugged banks, already loosened by frost and melting snows, along many a swollen mountain stream the surging torrent bore down their tributary reeds and shrubs and earth, along with riven boughs and uptorn trees, that beat like battering-rams against the good stone piers, holding their trust so sturdily. Then, eddying, the mighty current of the mocking Taff swung the tall fir-trees round and barred the still open arches cross-wise, one by one. Here, as in a net, the lamentable wreckage of the moors, of ruined cots and devastated farms, was caught and built up into a dam the turbid water could neither pass nor wash away. And rising, still rising, rising swifter than the rising sun, like a gigantic monster playing with boulder stones for bowls, the resistless river hammered with them against the parapet, and beat it in. Then, with a tumultuous roar as of triumph, and a deafening crash that startled sleepers in their beds more than a mile distant, the bridge that was built for centuries was swept away into irreparable ruin.

A shriek, as of mortal horror, rose as an echo from the crowded banks. The three brothers and their friends looked in each other's whitened faces as the cost of the catastrophe cut keenly into their souls.

Rhys groaned aloud.

'There does never have been such an awful flood since I was born; no masonry whatever could be standing against it,' cried grey-headed Owen Griffith, as he leant upon his staff to bear up against the wind.

He had seen the darkening glances cast on the luckless architect, and interposed to spare him the reproaches of coarse tongues.

'Keep that consolation for those who have run no risk. It will not be saving Cate and the rest from ruin and beggary, through this braggart brother of mine and his bridge,' burst from ungovernable Rhys.

'It may save me and you all from ruin,' retorted William defiantly. 'I have discovered what a flood can do, and what must be guarded against. Before the term of our guarantee expires, I will span this river with a bridge no flood shall wash away. 'Deed I will.'

A crowd had gathered. There were mocking voices heard beside Rhys'. A quarrel and a tumult threatened; for fierce as the war of the elements was the tempest raging in the breasts of men who had been closest friends.

'Come away,' cried placable Davy, linking his arm within William's, and looking round him. 'When the Lord do be speaking men should be silent. Yes, and before the breath of His nostrils the best man's handiwork will go down, look you.' And whispering something to his baited brother of 'home' and 'Elaine,' he drew him peaceably away.

He had no word of reproach, though he had staked the savings of his life, equally with Rhys, and his forbearance silenced others, then and afterwards.

Nor did any reproaches or taunts meet William at his own fireside. Rumour had run fleetfooted before them with the disastrous tidings. The shock had thus been anticipated. Clasping arms and sympathetic words alone awaited him. 'It is the will of God,' said both mother and wife; 'it is useless to rebel.'

Strange to say, William Edwards was apparently the least cast down of any. In a day or two he had recovered much of his elasticity. He showed a brave face to friends and envious foes, and maintained that no man should forfeit his guarantee. He would replace the wrecked bridge with a better.

There were men who sneered; there were more who sympathised, for the rebuilding would be at his own cost, and would sweep away all his former gains. Yet all friends did not desert him. Mr. Morris and the Viscount defended him against malicious attacks on 'unqualified pretenders.' No one could deny the vehement pressure of the terrible flood.

His newer plan, a bridge of a single arch, and of a span unprecedented, was seen and approved.

Workmen were not far to seek. Almost with the subsidence of the waters labourers were at work removing the still upstanding remains of the old piers, the tenacity of the masonry giving the undaunted builder fresh hope.

On fresh foundations another bridge arose, Jonet's husband marvelling at the measurements supplied for the wooden framework.

'Yes,' said William, whose pride and self-assumption rose as he surveyed the magnificent proportions of his bridge, 'I defy any flood to beat that down. Look at its breadth and height! Any volume of water could sweep under that arch! Yes, indeed, if it brought half a forest down with it. The piers were the mistake before, Thomas.'

''Deed, yes!' assented the other.

The keystone of the arch had been laid; time had been given for cement to harden; the wooden framework of the arch was being removed when this was said; only the parapets were wanting, and on those the men were beginning.

Another day the last scrap of timber was gone. Rhys had come down sullenly to the water's edge, weighted by his responsibility, and too doubtful of his brother's skill to give even his perseverance credit. There he found Jonet and Elaine, each with an infant in her arms. A few idlers stood staring and gaping under the trees on the steep banks.

All at once, with no more premonitory shock than a slight tremulous motion under foot that scared the working masons away, the keystone of the arch shot up into the air like a ball; the centre of the arch seemed to rise bodily and press upwards like an inverted V, as if impelled by superhuman force from the sides; there was a report as of a tremendous gunpowder explosion, a blinding shower of dust and flying stones whirling in mid air, a wide gap where a noble structure had been five minutes before.

Draw a curtain over the scene of the collapse. Close the ears to the taunts and mockery, the scorn and derisive epithets, which assail the unfortunate architect wheresoever he goes. Everywhere, save under his own roof, where wife and mother and Davy combined to shield him. But only his wife can enter into his feelings, and alleviate his bitter humiliation. Where he is weak, she is strong, and her very touch is healing.

Let us follow him into his little private room, and find him on his knees acknowledging in all humility his self-sufficient dependence on himself, his proud and confident trust in his own skill, his forgetfulness of the Lord, omnipotent alike to create and to destroy, from whom he derived whatever mental superiority he possessed, who had led him step by step to success, who had spoken to him by the warning voice of George Whitfield, and at last had broken his stubborn heart, and, with the thunders of calamity, brought him to acknowledge that, 'Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it.'

Out of that room he walked that day another manner of man.

He was the first to confess that the haunches or side foundations of his bridge had not sufficient strength to bear the strain of the lofty and expansive arch he had imposed upon them. But he added, 'Please God, I will yet, with His help, fulfil my contract, and build a bridge that shall stand, even if it leave me penniless.'

Fonder was Elaine of her husband in his humility and misfortune than in the pride of his success.

Davy had always stuck by him. 'He set no store by his bit of money whatever. William was welcome to every penny, if it was any good.'