The Maid of Havodwen. A novel

Front matter

BY THE SAME AUTHOR CLAUD BRENNAN ' ' A well-written, pathetic story. " — The Bristol Times and Mirror. " Some of the passages in the book before us are exceedingly beautiful." — The Country Gentleman. "Told with an air of simple reality that invests the tale with the dis tinction that surrounds a sympathetic record of fact. — A study of a nature deep and serious enough to attract the readers' attentive sympathy." — The Literary World. "We have much sunny artistic life, pleasant phases of culture, half a dozen delightful characters, an atmosphere of scholarship, no little play of wit, and certainly a complimentary exhibition of English life in its better aspects. The book deserves to attract attention, for it manifests a manli ness combined with humour such as is not too common in this kind of literature, and as a novel of life will, in many cases, secure a second and indeed a frequent reperusal." — The Liverpool Mercury.

"This is one of the best of the fifteen volumes I have seen in 'Arrow smith's Three and Sixpenny Series.' It is energetically written, and the plot is good." — The Manchester Courier, "We predict that the novel will achieve a speedy popularity." — The Preston Herald. ' ' The friendly discussions of literature and philosophy contain much that is worth reading, some sketches of Welsh character are vivid, and al together the book is one which the reader will not readily forget." — The Western Daily Press. A NOVEL BV JOHN FERRARS LONDON DIGBY, LONG & CO., PUBLISHERS 1 8 BOUVERIE STREET, FLEET STREET, E.C. DICBY'S POPULAR NOVEL SERIES. Croivn Svo, Handsome Cloth, Price 2_ bd. each. THE MYSTERY OF CLEMENT DUN- RAVEN. By Jean Middlemass, Author of ' A Girl in a Thousand,' etc. (Second Edition.) A HIDDEN CHAIN.

By Dora Russell, Author of ' The Other Bond,' ' Footprints in the Snow,' etc. (Second Edition. ) DR JANET OF HARLEY STREET. By Dr Arabella Kenealy, Author of ' Molly and Her Man-o'-War,' ' Some Men are Such Gentlemen,' etc. (Sixth Edition with Portrait.) THE JOLLY ROGER. By Hume Nisbet, Author of ' Her Loving Slave,' ' Bail Up,' etc. With Illustrations by the Author. (Fifth Edition) Other Works in same Series in due course. DIGBY, LONG & CO., LONDON.

Prologue

. ONE night, some few years ago, I remember forming one of the audience in a provincial theatre. The doors had been open for some time, the hour specified in the hand-bills for commencing had al ready struck, and the gods were becoming impatient. Obedient to the tinkling command of an unseen bell, the dark-coloured curtain rose and revealed a drop-scene, roughly enough painted, but not without skill and power. Unlike the conventional landscapes commonly met with on a drop-scene, this presented a life study, a group of figures in passion pose, which in a moment told its own story. At the second tinkle of the bell, this painted curtain rose also in its turn, and the play began. Whatever may have been its literary faults or merits, it is certain that the drama lacked neither incident nor action.

But there was one curious point about the way in which it was put upon the stage. A At the conclusion of each act the drop-scene fell, and as the threads of the dramatic story evolved them selves and grew gradually together, it became ap parent that the key to the whole lay in action so passionately figured on the painted rag. This prologue is the drop-scene hanging before the mimic stage on which the actors in the following little story play their parts ; and it presents to the reader a scene which, if an artist had painted it, he might have called " The end of a tragedy." It represents the interior of a room in a village inn — a village inn in Italy. It is late in the day, and the. bright sunlight streaming in through the open window falls on the rough furniture and on the group within. On the floor of the chamber lies the body of a man in the uniform of a sub-lieutenant in one of the infantry regiments of the Italian army.

Kneeling by the side of this prostrate form is a woman, weeping wildly, passionately. At a little distance, a pace or a pace and a half away, stood a young officer, wearing the same uniform as that upon the body of the dead man, contemplating the scene with an expression of great sorrow and commiseration. " O Andrea ! Andrea ! My brother Andrea ! " wailed the woman. For some time she seemed incapable of doing anything but kissing the dear, cold face, and bathing it with her tears. But after a little while she appeared to gain some control over her grief, and rising from her knees, she said to the young officer : " Enough of useless sorrow, let us think of revenge. Tell me, Stefano, what more you know of this affair." " Very little," replied the young officer. " As I told you, Andrea followed the English girl to Rome, and at last he found an opportunity of pressing his suit upon the girl herself.

It was very difficult for him to do so, for the young lady's uncle had refused to allow him to visit her after what occurred at Venice. But love conquers all things, and Andrea met the signorina at a ball in Rome — danced with her, and afterwards told all his love while they walked upon the terrace. And she— Corpo di Bacco ! " exclaimed the Italian, curling his moustache indignantly. " Those islanders are as cold as their climate ! The signorina laughed at him — received his passion with ridicule." "And Andrea ? " inquired the dead man's sister in a low, suppressed voice. " He seemed stunned," answered the lieutenant. " He hardly seemed at first to realise the situation. He left the ball-room as soon as he could do so un observed. Afterwards his whole life was changed. His military duties, indeed, were performed as punctiliously as before; but he would spend half the night loitering near the hotel where the signorina lodged, and in the afternoon he would follow her when she walked abroad, or when she rode in the Corso.

After that night in the ball-room, Andrea never again attempted to speak to her, but whenever their eyes met, the signorina would return his sorrow ful look with a half-contemptuous, half-laughing glance." " And she was a woman ! " exclaimed the sister bitterly. " Go on, Stefano." " This went on for more than a month," proceeded the other. " At last the lady and her uncle departed from Rome. Yesterday Andrea overtook me in the street. ' I can stand it no longer, Stefano,' he said, ' I have applied for a month's leave of absence. To morrow I shall go into the country.' I dined with him and was in his company the greater part of the day. In the evening there was much in his words and manner which alarmed me. That was why I sent for you. I thought you might be able to save him from himself. He left Rome an hour before dawn, and it was only by the merest chance that I learned the direction in which he had set out.

I do not know why he chose this lonely house for the fatal deed." There was silence in the death-chamber for a few minutes. Without, the rays of the evening sunlight made ruddy the tiled roof and roughly plastered walls of the wayside tavern. Upon a bench beside the door sat a countrywoman with a baby in her arms, whom she was singing to sleep with a low, crooning lullaby. "And this woman at first encouraged Andrea," said the sister, as with burning eyes she tried to read a letter which had been found in the dead man's clothes. " Ah ! yes, I see she did. Why, Stefano, this letter is full of love ! And yet she laughed at Andrea ! Oh, I cannot understand it ! Stefano, she was a devil, not a woman ! " The young officer shrugged his shoulders. " These islanders," he remarked cynically, " are too cold to love themselves, and they only laugh at it and call it summer madness in others."

" Stefano," said the sister, without taking any notice of the lieutenant's speech, " Stefano, that woman was as much Andrea's murderess as if she had stabbed him with her own hand." For a minute or two the speaker seemed to lose all control of herself, and her face, which could never have been very beautiful even when she was younger, was convulsed with passion. " See, I have her name here on this paper," she hissed through her set teeth, striking the letter as she spoke. " Yes, I have her name, I shall easily trace her. I will follow her — I will dog her footsteps, and when I have the opportunity I will kill her as she killed Andrea." Then she turned again towards the silent form lying upon the floor, and threw herself upon it in a passion of grief. " O Andrea ! Andrea ! " she moaned. " Andrea, my brother ! Andrea, caro mio ! "

Chapter I

In spite of the lonely life which she led in one of the most out-of-the-way corners of Wales, Dorothy Toye was merry and happy enough. And her happiness and gaiety were contagious, for she could sometimes even make the hard lines about her grandfather's mouth relax and his thin lips twitch with the ghost of a smile. It may be doubted whether old Major Rees loved anybody or anything in the world except himself and his money. But if anyone else shared his affection, it was Dorothy. I don't think he ever cared very much about his only daughter, Dorothy's mother, and I am sure he never forgave her for marrying Theodore Toye, when the latter was curate at Llaneinon. Marriage, under any circumstances, the major regarded as foolery, but marriage with a poor devil of a parson, starving on ninety pounds a year, he called utter madness.

So he shut his doors upon his daughter after her marriage, and when a few months later her husband was presented with a living in London, the major refused to see her before she left Wales. He heard nothing of them for seven years or more, and then there came a letter from one of the church wardens of his son-in-law's parish stating that both the Rev. Theodore Toye and his wife had died of cholera within twenty-four hours of each other, and that they left behind them a little orphan girl. Possibly there was something in the letter which touched the old man's cross-grained heart ; but certainly there was very little evidence of softened feelings in his voice when he told his housekeeper, " that Miss Jane," for so Mrs. Toye was still spoken of in her father's house, " was dead, and that he was going to London to fetch his little grandchild home."

" And Becca ! " he called out, as the woman went out of the room, " get my best hat, and put some thing black around it. I know what those London undertakers charge for hat-bands." " What will I put round it ? " queried Becca, standing in the doorway. " There is not a bit of crape in the house. Will I go down to Llaneinon to Mrs. Davies, the shop, to buy a yard ? " " What ? Buy a yard of crape, woman ! " cried the major angrily. " Do you think I am made of money? Buy crape ? No, indeed. Bring some of my old clothes down, and let me see if you cannot cut a piece of black cloth out of something or other, sufficient to sew into a decent hat-band." Becca Williams accordingly went upstairs, and presently returned with an old broadcloth coat of a very ancient cut, well worn and shiny, and patched and darned in places.

" That is a great deal too good," said the major, with decision. " Do you think this is a time to be extravagant, woman, when I am about to take a hungry child into the house ? Go and bring me that pair of trousers I left off wearing in the winter, when you told me you could not mend them any more, though I think if you had cut away the thin parts and put in a larger patch, they would have done for six months longer. Just go and bring them down, Becca ; you might be able to find enough for a hat band in the legs." Becca Williams made a grimace as she took the coat away. It was not the first occasion on which she and her master had differed on questions of economy ; but this time Becca thought the old man was going a little too far. However, she kept her thoughts to herself and brought down the best hat and the abandoned trousers.

" You see, Becca," said the major, in a friendly tone of voice, for he was delighted at having an opportunity of saving money, and at the same time of making use of a garment which he had reluctantly been obliged to leave off wearing, "you see, Becca, what it is to take care of old clothes. This cloth will make an excellent hat-band." And as he spoke he folded the leg of a very rusty and much patched pair of black trousers around his best hat. " Besides," he added cheerfully, " it will improve the appearance of the hat. The nap seems a little worn." " A little worn ! " muttered Becca to herself as she carried the hat and the pair of trousers down to the kitchen, to decorate the one with the other. " A little worn, indeed! It's worn out the old man means, I'm thinking. Why, this old chimney-pot was new when he married his first wife, I believe, if he didn't buy it second-hand even then."

" William Williams ! " she exclaimed, as she en tered the kitchen where her husband, who had been up half the night with a sick cow, was eating a late breakfast of bread and cheese and onions, "Miss Jane is dead, and the master is going up to London to fetch home her child." William Williams stared at his wife with his mouth full of bread and cheese. " Where's the clargyman ? " he asked as soon as he was able to speak. " Oh ! he's dead too, I suppose," replied Becca, who was subjecting the trousers to a critical exam ination. She was wondering which of the rusty legs would make the best hat-band. She came to the conclusion that the right was the least worn of the two, so she took up her scissors and began cutting it. " Master is going to wear that hat," Becca presently remarked, jerking her elbow in the direction of the ancient headcovering which she had put down on the table.

"Well, it's his best," remarked William Williams respectfully. " And this is to be the hat-band," proceeded Becca, exhibiting the piece of cloth which she had just cut from the pair of old trousers. " Why, that's master's old trousers that you were always patching last year!" exclaimed William Williams. " Dear anwyl ! I thought to be sure we had seen the last of them." " Seen the last of them, indeed ! " grumbled Becca, snipping away angrily at the frayed edges of the cloth. " Do we ever see the last of anything in this house ? Master is right down mean to grudge a bit of crape to put round his hat, when his own daughter is dead. Achi-i-fi ! I hate such meanness." Then William Williams went out to the cow-house, and Becca cut and sewed away busily for a little while. And really when her task was finished the old chimney-pot, as she called it, did not look so bad after all.

The next day, attired in his shabby hat and shabbier coat, old Major Rees went up to town. On his arrival there, he found that Mr. Mason, the friendly churchwarden who had written to inform him of the death of his daughter and her husband, had taken the little orphan to his own home, away from the infected house. The old major found the child with Mrs. Mason. She was a puny, undergrown little mortal, with reddish hair and large grey eyes, the natural expression of which seemed to be one of constant and in tense wonder. " Are you my grandpapa ? " she asked, looking up into the old man's wrinkled face. " Yes, my dear." The little maid looked at him again critically. "You are very ugly, you know," she said. And then she added as a saving clause, " But you don't look cross." " Dorothy, my dear !

" remonstrated Mrs. Mason, " you must not be so rude. You must please excuse her, Major Rees, she is a very spoiled little girl, I'm afraid." ",I am not rude," said Dorothy, with her great wondering eyes still fixed on her grandfather's face, " I am only speaking the truth, and mother said I must always speak the truth." There was a grim smile on the old man's face, and his protruding under-lip was thrust out farther than ever as he listened to the child's remarks. He did not care in the least whether she thought him ugly or not ; but he was glad, and it was a new thing for him to experience such a sensation about such a trifle, that the child did not think he looked cross. And from that day forth he and Dorothy were friends, and he was as kind to her as his mean old ways and habits would allow him to be.

The funeral of the child's parents had taken place the day before his arrival, so there was no occasion for lingering in town. Mr. Mason, who was a lawyer by profession, undertook to arrange the deceased vicar's affairs ; the major and the orphan went down into Wales as soon as possible. The old gentleman had written, the day before their departure, to William Williams, mentioning the train by which they might be expected to arrive, and requesting him to meet them at Llaneinon station with the donkey-cart, as the child would have some luggage. The train by which the two travellers were ex pected to arrive was due at Llaneinon at five o'clock in the afternoon, and it was some thirty minutes or so before that hour that little Dorothy Toye had caught her first glimpse of the sea. The railway, in this part of its course, runs close to the northern shore of an extensive bay.

So close, indeed, does the line approach to the water's edge that at high tide very often the waves break against the stones of the em bankment. The poor child, tired and weary with her long journey from London, was aroused to new life by the unexpected sight of the sea. The vision broke suddenly upon her as the train rounded a curve at the opening of one of the many valleys through which they had been travelling. " What is that, Grandpapa ? " she asked excitedly, as she pointed through the carriage window towards the silvery-grey expanse, which stretched away from the edge of the narrow belt of marsh-land between it and the railway. " That ? " said Major Rees, peering through his spectacles over the top of his newspaper, in which, for the fiftieth time since they left Paddington, he was making a careful study of the state of the money market.

"That? Why, child, that is the sea. You will see the sea often enough at Havodwen," and then the old man resumed his study of the paper. Dorothy Toye asked no more questions. Her eyes were so busy that her chattering tongue had per force to be quiet. She was in a new world now, a very different world from smoky London, and different too from that beautiful land of garden, wood and meadow through which she had been travelling all day. The shimmering.silvery surface ofthe sea,broken every now and then by the brown shadow of a passing sail, held her entranced ; and when the yellow sandhills for a little hid it from her sight, the strange wild flowers of the marsh-land preserved the spell. The train stopped for three minutes at a wayside station, just where the railroad crossed a little river, half choked between great sloping banks of brown and furrowed mud.

It was a tiny tidal river, and its banks were fringed with beds of wild sea-cabbage with prickly-looking leaves of silvery-green. Another minute and the train was speeding on its way across the marshland towards a line of wooded hills which shut in the valley to the west. The sea was hidden by sandhills which were larger and more grass-grown than before. The grass covering the boggy lowland was coarse and thin, but there were lovely ox-eyed daisies, and here and there a scarlet poppy. The sorrel grew there too, with its sober minded blossom. And where a tiny streamlet soaked its way slowly through the marsh, Dorothy saw the flower of the yellow flag droop over clumps of rushes. After a while the ground rose higher, at first gently and then more abruptly. The train passed through a short cutting, and then ran on beneath the scarped and weathered sea-face of the headland in which the line of hills, towards which they had been travelling, terminated.

From the carriage window Dorothy could see the sea once more. She was closer to it too, and could see the grey waves break in snowy foam upon the yellow sand. As the train sped swiftly round the cliff, the further shore of the bay, which had before been but a shadow in the sunshine, drew nearer and grew more distinct ; and Dorothy could see the line of rocks beyond the sands, and the low cliffs crested with belts and clumps of fir trees, and further yet a background of rounded hills of some considerable size, which looked as though they were made of patchwork, so much were they cut up into tiny square and oblong fields. Presently the railway left the cliffs behind it, and turning somewhat abruptly to the north it ran along a high embankment, which divided sharply the sea shore from a narrow slip of pasture-land, which stretched at the foot of the hills to the right.

The train now began to slacken speed, and a few minutes later had stopped at Llaneinon station. " Here we are, Dorothy,'' said the old major, push ing his newspaper into his pocket, and fumbling with the handle of the carriage door. It was opened from without, and the major stepped on to the platform, quite forgetting Dorothy, so great was his hurry to look for William Williams and the donkey-cart. It was the stationmaster who had opened the carriage door, and it was he who lifted the child on to the platform. " You are all right now, missy," he said, as he left her to attend to the wants of some other passenger. As Dorothy stood looking about her, her great wondering eyes opened more widely than ever. It was a strange place in which she found herself; the long gravelled platform with its broad kerb of pen nant stone, the tiny station office with its overhanging, slated roof, and the tall white palings, through the interstices of which she could see the sandy shore and the broad waters of the river's mouth, beside which the village of Llaneinon stood.

The whole scene seemed to the child to be shut in by green hills and wooded slopes, save to the south, where the eye rested on the silvery surface of the sunlit sea. While Dorothy was still looking about her, a whistle sounded, and the long train moved slowly out of the station, and then on the other side she saw the spire of a church and the roofs of half a dozen houses. And then she saw her grandfather beckoning to her from the further end of the platform, and she ran towards him. At the station gate stood a donkey-cart, into which the child's trunk, containing all her worldly belong ings, had already been placed. A good-natured looking man was standing beside the humble vehicle, and when Dorothy and her grandfather approached, he took the former up in his arms, and set her down upon her own trunk inside the cart.

Then the procession set out for Havodwen. The old major walked along the sandy side-walk, and William Williams in the road near the donkey's head. Dorothy Toye from her seat within the cart con templated Mr. Williams with great interest. She had never seen anyone so freckled before, and she greatly admired the way in which he tied his trousers with a piece of string just beneath the knees, so as to keep them out of the dust. Presently she began to feel the necessity of having a little conversation, but she was not quite sure what topic would be acceptable to her companion. "That is a very nice donkey," she at last ventured to observe in a conciliatory tone. William Williams looked round with a broad grin upon his freckled face. " Oh, yes ! He is nice enough, miss," he said. Then he thumped the donkey with his stick, and ejaculated, " Hasyn !

" which proceeding he appeared to think would induce the animal to accelerate the short, quick step by which, after the manner of its kind, it was getting over the ground. " What is his name ? " inquired Dorothy. " We call him Peter," was the reply. " Gee up, Peter ! " And the donkey, laying back its long ears, broke into an easy amble. Dorothy smiled gravely. She felt she was improv ing her opportunities. " What does he eat ? " was her next question. "Whatever he can get. miss," replied Mr. Williams. " He likes corn, but he don't get it. Next best he likes carrots. Carrots, Peter ! " At the mention of his favourite vegetable, the donkey laid his ears right back for a moment, then shot them forward, and indulged in a brief and spas modic imitation of a gallop. Dorothy was so interested in Mr. Williams and his donkey that she had hardly looked about her as she rode through Llaneinon.

The sandy road by which they were travelling led straight across the village common, and the donkey-cart was nearly half way across this bit of unenclosed pasture land when the B old major, who had fallen a little behind, called out to William Williams to stop. The countryman accordingly checked the donkey, and when Major Rees came up to them he said he would ride the rest of the way in the cart. So saying the old man climbed up and took his seat beside Dorothy on the trunk. They were a curious pair of passengers : the old major in his shabby hat and threadbare coat, with his long, thin figure so doubled up from the exi gencies of his position that his knees approached nearly to his chin ; and the little red-haired child in her hastily-made and ill-fitting black cloak and frock. Dorothy lapsed into silence when her grandfather took his seat beside her on the trunk ; she doubted whether he would care to talk about Peter and his habits.

So she contented herself with looking about her. The road, after it had crossed the common, ran close beside the great railway embankment over which the child and her grandfather had just before travelled in the train. The embankment was to the right, and above it Dorothy could see nothing but the glowing afternoon sky. To the left were some enclosed fields, sloping up towards the edge of the wood which covered the crest of the hill. There was not much to interest a child in the surrounding scenery, and presently Dorothy found herself listening to the conversation which was taking place by fits and starts between her grandfather and William Williams. " You went to market on Saturday, William ? " the major was asking. " Yes sure, I went to market." " And you took the butter ? ' " Yes. I took eighteen pounds of butter, and five dozen eggs, and two chickens, and the young hen which has been crowing for these last three weeks or more."

" Hem ! Did you get a good price ? " " Pretty well. Becca sold the butter at one and fourpence a pound ; the eggs, fifteen for a shilling ; the chickens, two and six each ; and the young hen for three shillings. It came to one pound and six teen shillings altogether. Becca has got the money for you in the old stocking." The old gentleman grunted. Privately he was well enough satisfied with his man's statement of accounts, but he did not think it wise to reveal his satisfaction. So they journeyed slowly on until they came quite close to the inland portion of the great headland, under the sea-face of which the railway curved, and the name of which Dorothy afterwards learned was Penyrallt. At this point the road turned sharply to the left, and began to ascend a steep ravine between the adjacent hills.