David's Little Lad

“No, I am not. I’m not a bit happy, David,” and I burst into tears.

“What’s this?” said David in astonishment.

“I am not happy,” I repeated, now that the ice was broken, letting forth some of my rebellious thoughts, “I’m so dull here, I do so want to live a grand life.”

“Tell me, dear, tell me all about it?” said David tenderly. To judge from the tone of his voice he seemed to be taking himself to task in some strange way. The love in his voice disarmed my anger, and I spoke more gently.

“You see, David, ’tis just this, you and mother have got Tynycymmer, you have the house, and the farm, and all the land, and, of course, you have plenty to do on the land, riding about and seeing to the estate, and keeping the tenants’ houses in order, and ’tis very nice work, for ’tis all your own property, and of course you love it; and mother, she has the house to manage, and the schools to visit, but I, David, I have only dull, stupid lessons. I have nothing interesting to do, and oh! sometimes I am so dull and so miserable, I feel just as if I was buried alive, and I do so want to be unburied. I have no companions. I have no one to speak to, and I do long to go away from here, and to see the world.”

“You would like to leave Tynycymmer!” said David.

“Yes, indeed, indeed I should. I should dearly love to go out into the world as Owen has done; I think Owen has such a grand life.”

Here I paused, and finding that David did not reply, I ventured to look into his face. The expression of his silent face was peculiar; it showed, though not a muscle moved, though not a feature stirred, the presence of some very painful thought. I could not believe that my words had given birth to this thought, but I did consider it possible that they might have called it into fuller being; quickly repentant I began to apologise, or to try to apologise, the sting out of my words.

“You know, David, that you and mother are not like me, you both have plenty to interest you here. Mother has the schools, and, oh! a thousand other things, and you have the place and the farm.”

“And I have my little lad.”

“Of course – I forgot baby.”

“Yes, Gwladys,” said David, rousing himself and shaking off his depression, “I have my son, and he won’t leave me, thank God. I am sorry you find your home dull, my dear. I have always wanted you to love it, there is no place like it on earth to me.”

He took my hand very gently, and removed it from his arm, then walked with great strides into the house. His face and manner filled me with an undefined sense of gloom and remorse.

I followed him like a guilty thing. I would not even go into the drawing-room to bid mother good-night, but went at once up to my own room. When I got there, I locked the door; this conversation had not tended to raise my spirits. As I sat on my bed, I felt very uncomfortable.

What an old, old room it was, and all of oak, floor, walls, ceiling, all highly-polished, and dark with the wear of age. Other Gwladys Morgans had carved their names on the shutters, and had laid down to rest on the great four-post bedstead. Other daughters of the house had stood in the moonlight and watched the silent shining of the waves. Had they too, in their ignorance and folly, longed for the bustle and unrest of the great wide world, had they, too, felt themselves buried alive at Tynycymmer? With David’s face in my memory, I did not like these thoughts. I would banish them. I opened a door which divided my room from the nursery, and went noisily in. What an awkward girl I was! I could do nothing like any one else; every door I opened, shut again with a bang, every board my foot pressed, creaked with a sharp note of vengeance. Had nurse Gwen been in the nursery, what a scolding I should have merited, but nurse Gwen was absent, and in the moonlit room I advanced and bent over a little child’s cot. In the cot lay a boy of between one and two, a rosy, handsome boy, with sturdy limbs, and great dark-fringed eyes; he was sleeping peacefully, and smiling in his sleep; one little fat hand grasped a curly, woolly toy dog, the other was flung outside the bedclothes; his little pink toes were also bare. With undefined pain still in my heart, and David’s face vividly before me, I bent down and kissed the child. I kissed him passionately, forgetting his peculiar sensitiveness to touch. He started from his light slumbers with a shrill baby cry, his dark eyes opened wide. I took him out of his crib, and paced up and down with him. For a wonder I managed to soothe him, skilfully addressing him in my softest tones, rubbing my forehead against his soft cheek, and patting his back. The moon had left this side of the house, and the room was in complete shadow, but I did not think of lighting a candle, for to the child in my arms the darkness was too dense for any earthly candle to remove; he was David’s little lad, and he was blind.

Chapter Three

Some Day, you will See that he is Noble

I have said that David’s great characteristic was strength, but by this I do not at all mean to imply that he was clever. No one ever yet had called David clever. When at school he had won only second or third class prizes, and at Oxford very few honours had come in his way.

He had a low opinion of his own abilities, and considered himself a rather stupid, lumbering kind of fellow, not put into the world to make a commotion, but simply, as far as in him lay, to do his duty.

David was never known to lecture any one; he never, in the whole course of his life, gave a piece of gratuitous advice; he could and did advise when his advice was directly demanded, but he was diffident of his own opinion, and did not consider it worth a great deal. To the sinners he was always intensely pitiful, and so gentle and sorrowful over the erring, that many people must have supposed he knew all about their weaknesses, and must once have been the blackest of black sheep himself.

No, David possessed none of the characteristics of genius; he was neither clever nor ambitious. To be in all men’s mouths, and spoken highly of by the world, would not have suited him at all; he cared, we some of us thought, almost too little for man’s opinion, and I have even on one occasion heard Owen call him poor-spirited.

But all the same, I am not wrong in saying that David’s great, and grand, and distinguishing characteristic was strength. He possessed strength of body, soul, and spirit, to a remarkable degree. Long ago, in the past ages, there were men of our house, men who ate roast beef, and quaffed beer and cider, and knew nothing of the weak effeminacy of tea and coffee; these were the men who would laugh at a nerve ache, who possessed iron frames, and were of goodly stature. Of course we degenerated since then, our lives became less simple, and more luxurious, and our men and women in their paler cheeks and slighter frames, and bodies capable of feeling bodily suffering, bore witness to the change.

But David was a Morgan of the old race – tall, upright, broad, with massive features, neither handsome nor graceful, but strong as a lion. He had never in his life known an ache, or a day’s serious illness. When Owen and I suffered so much with the measles, David did not even stay in bed; so also with whooping-cough, so also with all other childish maladies. He caught them of course, but they passed over him lightly as a summer breeze, never once ruffling his brow, or taking the colour from his cheek. Yes, David was strong in body, and he was also strong in mind; without possessing talent, he had what was better, sense; he knew which path was the wisest to tread in, which course of action would lead, not to the happiest, but to the best result. His mind was of that calm and rare order, which decides quickly, and once for all; he was never troubled with indecision, and he never asked of others, “What shall I do here? There is a lion in my path at this juncture, how shall I overcome him?” No, he slew his own lions, and in a silent warfare, which gave no token of the tears and blood expended by the victorious warrior.

But the strongest part of David, that which made him the man he was, was his soul; and here, he had asked for and obtained, the aid of a higher Power.

His was the sort of character that never could have got on without the conscious presence of a God. His soul must be anchored upon some rock which would balance the whole equilibrium of a grand but simple nature.

His faith was primitive, and undisturbed by modern doubts. He took the commandments of God in their obvious and literal meaning, he believed what the apostle said when he told men to “pray without ceasing;” he hearkened to him again, when he entreated men to “search the Scriptures;” he was a man of few rather than of many words, but he always found some to cry to God with; he cared very little for books, but he read his Bible daily. Thus his views of life were clear and unclouded. He was put into the world to do his duty. His duty was to love God better than, and his neighbour as well as, himself. This simple rule of action comprises much, and here David acted right nobly, and proved the strength of his soul. And he was early tried, for our father died when he was twelve years old, and then the most obvious part of the duty which stared him in the face lay in the text, “Bear ye one another’s burdens.” This was one of David’s plainest and earliest duties; a duty which he performed humbly, hardly knowing that he performed it at all. Others leant upon him, and he bore their burdens, so fulfilling the law of Christ.

I think I may truly say of David, that he was the most self-sacrificing man I ever met.

But for all that, for all his gentleness, his kindness, his affection, he was not my favourite brother, nor was he my mother’s favourite son.

I remember an early incident which revealed this fact in my mother’s heart, and perhaps unduly biassed my own.

I was standing, shortly after my father’s death, in the deep recess of the nursery window – I was standing there watching David and Owen, both home for their holidays, pacing up and down on the gravel sweep in front of the house. David was very strong, and showed his superior strength in his great size even then, but Owen was very beautiful. David was stout and clumsy, Owen slightly made and graceful. As I watched them, mother came behind me, put her arms round my tiny waist, kissed my brow, and whispered as she looked at the two lads —

“My noble boy!”

“Which? mother,” I asked.

“My Owen,” replied mother.

I opened my eyes very wide, gazed again with new wisdom at the boys, perceived the superior beauty of the one, worshipped the beauty, and from this time I loved Owen best.

And Owen was very lovable, Owen was beautiful, brilliant, gay, with lofty ambitions, and versatile showy talents. If his affections wanted depth, they never wanted outward warmth. His smile was a thing to remember, his caress was worth waiting six months to obtain. How well I remember those summer holidays, when he flashed like the sunshine into the dull old house, when his whistle and gay laugh sounded from parlour to cellar. When Owen was at home, Tynycymmer was the happiest place in the world to me; then mother put on her best gowns, and wore her most festive air, then my lessons, always scant and desultory, were thrown to the four winds, and I was allowed unbridled liberty. What fishing expeditions we made all round the coast! how daring were our exploits!

I was much younger than my brothers, but the brothers were always gentle to the only little sister – both the brothers – but while I oftenest rode on David’s broad shoulder, I received most caresses and most loving words from Owen, so I loved Owen best. So too with mother, she thought very highly of that broad-shouldered, plain-faced, sensible lad, who was so ready to fly at her slightest bidding, so anxious to execute her smallest command. She said over and over again that David was the best boy that widowed mother ever possessed, and that he was the comfort of her life. But her eye never brightened at his approach, as it did when Owen came and sat by her side; to David she gave her approval, but to Owen she gave of the fulness of her mother’s love.

He was an exacting boy, and from those who gave much, he demanded more.

Though David was the eldest and the heir, Owen had double his allowance of pocket money when at school; but then Owen was delicate, fastidious, refined; he needed small indulgences, that would have been wasted on David’s coarser strength. He was taught accomplishments, for he was an inborn artist, and his musical ear was fine. At Oxford he entered an expensive and learned college, but then his intellect was of the first order. For every indulgence he demanded, an excuse was found; and for every granted indulgence, he was only loved the more.

To the worship of his women folks, Owen returned an easy, nonchalant regard; but David he loved, to David he gave his strongest and deepest affection. And yet David was the only one who opposed him, the only one who was not carried away by his fascinations, the only one who read him aright; and some of the heaviest burdens of David’s youth, had been borne because of, and through Owen. I heard it dimly whispered, first in the early college days, something about Owen and his wild oats. It came to me through the servants, and I did not know what it meant. I was an innocent country child, I had never even read a novel. Owen was sowing his wild oats. I remember puzzling over the phrased I should have forgotten what was to me so meaningless an expression, but for some events that happened about the same time. Mother got some letters, which she would not show to me, which she carried away to her own room to read, returning to my presence, some time after, with her eyes red with weeping. Then there was a visit from a man, a lawyer, nurse Gwen informed me, who brought with him piles of papers, and was closeted with mother for the best part of a day; and soon after, most wonderful of all, David came home suddenly, in the middle of the term, came home without Owen, and I was informed that Owen had gone abroad for a time, and that David was not going back to Oxford any more. David settled down quietly at home, without taking his degree, and his coming of age, which took place a couple of months after, was let pass without any celebration. This made a deep impression on me, for we four, mother, David, Owen, and I, had so often spoken of it, and of the grand things that should then be done. Never a Morgan had come of age yet, without oxen being roasted whole, without beer and cider flowing freely, without dancing and festivity. But this Morgan stepped into his honours quietly; the day unnoticed, except by an extra kiss from mother and sister, his brother far away, his own brow thoughtful, and already slightly careworn.

The tenants were angry, and voted him stingy – close – an unworthy son of the ancient race, no true chip of the old block, and fresh signs of what they considered closeness and nearness, were soon forthcoming. Several servants, amongst them the housekeeper, were dismissed, the establishment was put upon a smaller scale, a humble pony phaeton was substituted for the old and time-honoured family coach. I was twelve years old at that time, a good deal with nurse Gwen, and many words, unmeant for my ears, were heard by me. The substance of them all lay in this remark —

“If the young master gave the tenants any more of his closeness, he would be the least popular Squire Morgan who ever lived at Tynycymmer!”

Indignant, and with tears in my eyes, I sought David, told him what I had heard, and demanded an explanation.

“There is nothing to explain, dear,” he replied. “We have lost some money, and are obliged to retrench for a bit. But don’t repeat the servants’ foolish talk to the mother, Gwladys, ’twill only pain her.”

After this, we settled down very quietly, no fresh event occurring for some time. David went more and more amongst the people, acquainting himself with every man, woman, and child on the estate, winning his way just in the most natural way into their hearts, learning all about their private history, finding out exactly where the shoe pinched John Thomas, and where Thomas John’s sorest trouble lay, until gradually I heard nothing more of his stinginess, but much of his love, and when he took the babies in his arms, and called the tiny children by their names, the mothers prayed God to bless the young squire with a fervour they had never used for the old.

This took place very naturally, and mother’s face began to grow contented and happy. Still, Owen never came home; he was spoken of lovingly, hopefully, but neither mother nor David mentioned his return, and I grew tired of asking questions on this subject, and tired of wishing him back. I dreamed dreams of him instead, and imagined with pride the great deeds he must be doing, and the glory he must be winning. So far away, so little mentioned, his return so indefinite, he became clothed with a halo of romance to me. My love grew in intensity, and I magnified my beautiful and gifted brother into a hero. It was just then David’s great joy, and also his great trouble, came to him.

We Morgans of Tynycymmer were very proud. Why not? we were poor, old, and Welsh – quite enough to account for any haughtiness we might assume. We believed ourselves to be, if not the direct descendants, at least a collateral branch of that Morgan, son of Leir, some time a king of this land, after whom this county was named. There was a time when to be a true Morgan, of Glamorganshire, meant more to its happy possessor than many a higher sounding title. Of course that time and its glory had passed away, years had deprived us of more than the old stout hearts of our ancient ancestors; our gold had also taken to itself wings, our grey and ivy-covered home had fallen, much of it, into ruins, and our broad and goodly acres passed into the unloving hands of strangers. Still, firmly as the limpet to the rock, the poorer we grew, the more did we attach ourselves to the wild old Welsh country. Each squire of Tynycymmer bringing home, in his turn, a bride who often possessed neither money nor beauty; but always something else, without which she could never have married a Morgan of our house – she had pure, untainted Welsh blood in her veins. None of the Morgans were so foolish, so unfaithful to the old stock, as to marry an English woman; if our gold was scant, our blood at least was pure. So we went on, each fresh master of Tynycymmer a little poorer than his father, when suddenly and unexpectedly a chance came in our way. There was born into the world, a Morgan either more sensible or more lucky than his progenitors; a Morgan who, going abroad to seek a bride, brought home one who not only could boast of blue Welsh blood, but had also beauty and a fortune. This lucky Morgan was my father, his rich and lovely bride my mother.

Esther Williams was the daughter of a Glamorganshire man. Her father possessed, at the other side of the county, a fine extent of coal country, and a very large fortune was he able to bestow upon his only child. The fortune consisted of some coalfields, and with the rental from these my father was able to restore Tynycymmer to much of its ancient splendour. My mother’s family was not so old as ours, but being true Welsh, and having beauty and a fortune, this fact was graciously overlooked by us, and we condescended to use her money to our own aggrandisement. I have said that we were a proud family – but of us all, there was none who so upheld the family traditions, and who so rejoiced in the family honour, as the one who was herself only a Morgan by marriage, my mother.

Of the days when she was only Esther Williams, she never cared to speak; her money was never “her money,” but the “Morgans’ money.” Money that brought fresh glory to the old house, was honoured indeed – she regarded herself individually, as a humble instrument destined to do much good – for herself, her appearance, her character, she felt little pride or satisfaction; but for the sake of the name given to her by her husband, she would indeed walk with stately mien, and uphold her dignity to the last; and well she could do it, for though a little woman, she was singularly dignified and graceful-looking, and was, in short, every inch worthy of the high position she believed herself to have attained. She possessed the dark eyes and raven locks of the true Welsh woman. How I came to be fair-haired and blue-eyed remained a mystery, and was reckoned rather a disgrace. When a tiny child, Gwen had impressed this fact upon me, and I remember blushing and looking distressed, when fair people were mentioned. Yes, my mother was a beautiful woman; I have a vivid memory of her, as she looked in my father’s lifetime, dressed in the time-honoured black velvet, the old jewels flashing in her hair, as bending down her haughty dark face, until it touched my fair one, she filled my greedy and receptive little brain with the ancient stories of our house.

I heard of the ghosts and the deeds of vengeance from Gwen, of the fairies and deeds of glory from mother.

Yes, my mother was very beautiful, and with the exception of two specks in the fair fruit of her heart, the best woman I know. How loving she was, how tender, how strong, how brave! But the specks marred the full perfection: one speck was her pride, the other her unjust preference for Owen. At the time of which I write, I did not consider this preference unjust, for I too loved Owen best, but even then I had felt the full power of her pride. I mention it here in order to make David’s sorrow and David’s joy more fully understood.