“Well!” said Miss Pottinger. “Country-house life! I only hope she has the gumption to take an appropriate house-gift. Should we cable her about it, I wonder?”
“I had gained the impression that there was no country-house life left,” said Dean Knapp; “but then, in Wales probably things are on a much humbler scale.”
“That is really all we have to consider,” said Mr Snelgrove, “except expenditure. In spite of what Jodrell and Stanhope have been able to do, the money keeps piling up at the bank. It is unlikely that there will be any official questioning of our handling of funds, at least for some time, but we must bear in mind that we can be called upon for an accounting by the Public Trustee at his discretion.”
When the meeting was over, Veronica served the Trustees with coffee and Christmas cake, using the fine Rockingham service which Auntie Puss regarded as her own.
“And how have you been keeping, Veronica?” said that lady, eyeing her speculatively.
“Very well, thank you, Miss Pottinger,” said Veronica, but she wore a look of strain which was becoming habitual. Nearly two years had passed since the reading of Mrs Bridgetower’s will, and so far there was no sign that she might have a child, and retrieve the Bridgetower money for her husband.
9
It was on the 21st of December that Monica set out from Paddington, travelled to Shrewsbury, changed her train and crossed the border of Wales to Trallwm, and there took a local to Llanavon. She had in her luggage a suitable house-gift (a large and expensive—but not embarrassing—box of candied fruits of appropriately Christmas-like appearance) so Miss Pottinger need not have feared for her on that score. But she carried in her heart misgivings about country-house life which were all that Miss Pottinger could possibly have desired. Everything that she had ever read, or seen in the movies, or heard, about the county gentry of Great Britain came back to her: would she have to hunt foxes? would she be despised because she could not ride a horse? what about the inevitable awesome butler? what about the equally inevitable heiress of broad acres, a picture of British hauteur and beauty (Miss Kinwellmarshe was cast mentally for this role) who would make her feel like a crumb, while being exquisitely but coldly polite all the time? Lady Phoebe Elphinstone had been perfectly wonderful and not a bit awesome, on the one occasion when Monica had met her, and Lady Phoebe’s secretary, Miss Catriona Eigg of Uist, had been helpful and kind in every possible way, even to suggesting the box of fruits, but neither of these benign presences was on the train with her as she moved, at the deliberate pace of Welsh trains, from Shrewsbury to Trallwm.
There was, however, a man in the same carriage whom she had seen get on the train at Oxford, and who had, like herself, changed at Shrewsbury. A young man, apparently English from his clothes and his easy way with porters; a shortish, plumpish young man with a high colour (incipient broken veins in the cheeks?) and short dark hair very neatly brushed. As well as a large valise he carried a briefcase crammed with books, which he kept close to him on the seat as though its presence were a comfort. In his hand he had an orange-bound pamphlet, which he read with great concentration, moving his lips as he did so, and occasionally making phlegmy noises, apparently clearing his throat. But.the farther they travelled from Shrewsbury the greater his excitement became, and the less he worked over his book; at times he hung right out of the window, and gaped at the landscape. As a castle became fleetingly visible, nesting among trees, she thought he muttered “Peacock”. When the train drew up at a tiny station labelled Buttington he threw open the door and said in an awed voice, under his breath The Battle of Buttingtune, 893”, and stared in all directions at small holdings and distant hills until the guard locked him in again. He sank back on the seat, and stared at Monica with unseeing eyes. “An old and haughty nation, proud in arms,” he whispered, and then repeated it, with greater emphasis. When the train drew up at Trallwm he hastily consulted his yellow pamphlet, leaned well out of the window, and fixed a porter with his eye.
“Arrgh!” he cried, in accents of despair. “Arrgh!”—but no further utterance came.
“Yessir? What can I do for you, sir?” said the porter, and the young man fell back upon the seat, deflated.
Monica, with the inflexible determination of women travelling, snatched the porter for herself, and had her luggage transferred to the local for the coast which would take her to Llanavon. She took good care to get into a carriage far from the afflicted young man.
But when, half an hour later, she dismounted at Llanavon station, he did so too, and when a girl of about Monica’s own age approached them and said “For Neuadd Goch?” it was he who said, “Yes, thanks, I’m John Scott Ripon.”
Monica had never heard the name of her destination pronounced by a Welsh tongue. Lady Phoebe and Miss Eigg of Uist had tended to hurry over it and avoid it.
“Miss Gall?” said the girl. “I’m Ceinwen Griffiths; you’re going to my uncle’s, aren’t you? I’ve brought the trap, because it’s a fairly clear day, and I thought you might like to ride that way. Mr Lloyd’ll take care of your luggage, and somebody’ll bring it up in an hour or so.”
She led the way to a pretty governess-cart, drawn by a pony. Monica had never seen such a thing before, and Ripon was delighted with it. He couldn’t, he said, have possibly hoped for anything better.
Introductions left Monica somewhat flattened. John Scott Ripon, it appeared, was not English, but an American Rhodes scholar, and he seemed to get on very easy terms with Miss Ceinwen Griffiths in a matter of minutes. She was a girl who, without being pretty, was uncommonly attractive, for she had a soft and winning air, beautiful legs, and quite the loveliest speaking voice that Monica had ever heard; everything that she said was so beautifully articulated, and so charmingly stressed, that it was a kind of music. This was not the habitual downhill tune of English speech, or the tangle of stressed and unstressed syllables upon which Revelstoke insisted, but a form of speech-play—a delight in sound and words for their own sake. It was fascinating, and it struck Monica mute. But not Ripon.
“I made a terrible boob of myself on the train,” said he, as they set off in the pony-trap. “I was trying to speak Welsh to the porter at Trallwm. I’d been studying this book, you see—Welsh in a Week—and I wanted to say “A wnewch chwi edrych ar ol fy nheithglud?”—thought I’d surprise him. But it all died in my throat. Of course I knew he’d speak English, but I thought I’d try it. I always like to try everything. Much Welsh spoken around here, Miss Griffiths?”
“No, hardly at all. A little on market days, when the people come in from the hills. And they wouldn’t have spoken to you, except in English; it makes Welsh people shy, hearing it spoken by English-speaking people.”
“Do you speak it at all?”
“Annhebig i’r mis dig du.
A gerydd i bawb garu;
A bair tristlaw a byrddydd
A gwynt i ysbeiliaw gwydd;
–do you follow?”
“No, but it sounds great.”
“That’s a comment on today’s weather by one of our old poets; you won’t find it in Welsh in a Week. But I’m not a fair example. My father’s quite a well-known Celtic scholar.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful! Then it’ll be an even greater pleasure to meet him.”
“You won’t meet him. I’m staying with Uncle Griff and Aunt Dolly; they’re dears, too, but not the least bit Celtic scholars. You’ll see.”
“But it was an understandable mistake. You see, I’ve looked your uncle up in Burke’s Landed Gentry. Terrific ancestry, so I thought he might be very hot on Welsh history, and customs and whatnot.”
“You’ve been doing your homework, haven’t you? Uncle Griff will talk to you about genealogy all night, but any Welshman will do that. No, Uncle Griff’s not a scholar, but he’s a landed gent.”
“Unbroken tenancy of the Neuadd Goch estate since 1488, the book said.”
“Oh, how beautifully you say Neuadd Goch!”
“No kidding?”
“Well—not very much kidding.”
Miss Ceinwen Griffiths, it appeared, was not only very attractive but an accomplished flirt. Monica began to feel reservations about her.
They had mounted a steep hill, and were now driving along a ridge. Because the pony cart was high, they could see over the hedges on both sides of the road, toward England on the right, and toward the mountains of Wales on the left. It was such country as Monica had never seen before, rolling, gentle, quiet in its winter sleep, yet with an air of mystery which could not be explained. Perhaps it was the quality of the light, which varied so greatly within the range of her vision. Where they were it was not quite so fine a day as Miss Griffiths had said; as the pony trotted through the lanes the air was wet and chilly on their faces. But a mile or two away on the English side of the ridge the sun shone in golden patches, moving slowly across the side of another hill. On the Welsh side it seemed to be raining in the middle distance, for there the land was purplish, as though it had been bruised, but near these darkened patches were stretches of grey obscurity, which occasionally stirred and heaved, for it was mist. But beyond the purple, and the mist, and a few pools of tearful sunlight, rose mountains which caught a little wintry glory from an unseen setting sun, and were otherwise deepest blue-black. Their heads were in cloud.
“On a good day you can see the two peaks of Cadeir Idris from here,” said Ceinwen, “but not often in winter.”
“Marvellous!” said Ripon. “Just the country for Morte d’Arthur.”
“We like it very well,” said Ceinwen.
“Oh, come on. Miss Griffiths, that won’t do! It’s absolutely terrific, and you know it. Leave understatement to the English. I’m an enthusiast; they say all Americans are, but it’s not true. But I am. I enjoy things while I’ve got ‘em. I’m a romantic. Don’t discourage me.”
“I won’t. Wales always seems very beautiful to people when they first come to it. Perhaps we try to restrain our own feelings so as not to seem to be boasting. Now we leave the Cefn, and drop into this little wooded place. It’s called Cwm Bau.”
“Cwm, a valley, and bau—let’s see, wait till I get out Welsh in a Week—or will you tell us?”
“In English it means the Dirty Dingle—though why nobody knows, because it’s very pretty, as you see. And then we go up the hill on the other side to Neuadd Goch. You haven’t said anything, Miss Gall; I hope you don’t find your first sight of Wales disappointing?”
“I’m an enthusiast, too,” said Monica; “but I’m not very good at words. I think it’s the loveliest landscape I’ve ever seen.”
“I truly hope that it will be kind to you.”
10
Life at Neuadd Goch was kind indeed. Monica knew nothing of country life; in Canada she had had the usual experiences of cottage life at lakesides with the joys of insects, privies, boiled water and the thunder of rain on the roof, but an ordered and comfortable existence in the midst of natural beauty was utterly new to her. In this house there was no window which did not look out upon a view of the beautiful valley on one lift of which it stood, and the variations of light changed these views from hour to hour, and sometimes from minute to minute. The farms and cottages in the landscape, thatched and built of white plaster and blackened oak beam, were so picturesquely pretty that she could not believe that they were real farms at all, for her only experience had been of the plain-faced farmsteads of her own part of Ontario. She fell immediately and deeply in love with North Wales, and in this affair she was rivalled by John Scott Ripon. As for the family at Neuadd Goch, they were everything that was kind and charming. No awesome butler, but two maids so obliging that Monica suspected them briefly of hypocrisy, managed affairs. She liked Ceinwen better than any girl she had met since leaving home, and desperately wanted her as a “best girl friend”—but Ceinwen was not aware of this North American relationship, and was quite as flirtatious in her behaviour toward Monica as she was toward Ripon. And Mr and Mrs Hopkin-Griffiths were very old hands at entertaining house guests, and knew that the art lies in leaving them to themselves a great part of the time. Monica and Ripon arrived on the afternoon of the twenty-first of December; by tea time the day following they felt as though they had been at Neuadd Goch for a glorious year, and on the morning of the twenty-third they were such seasoned country folk that they went for a walk after breakfast, wonderfully happy. Ripon was bursting with talk.
“I’ve got it straightened out now,” said he. “Ceinwen is the daughter of Professor Morgan Griffiths, who is only a half-brother of our host, who is Hopkin-Griffiths, and very big stuff in this part of Wales, and a timber man in a large way. That’s where the money comes from. He doesn’t seem to work, but that’s his craftiness. Dolly was a widow when she married him; she’s English and has a son—that’s the son she’s always talking about who may come for Christmas. The Squire seems very fond of the boy, but I think I detect a note of worry in his voice when he talks about him. It makes it interesting, I think, everybody being halves and steps. Now in my family we’re all fully related, and I can’t say it makes either for interest or good feeling. What about your family?”
“Oh my family hasn’t got any specially interesting relationships. It seems to make them interesting, being Welsh. When I was a child I sometimes used to wish we had a romantic foreign strain of some sort, to cheer things up.”
“That’s what I don’t understand. Ceinwen seems to make a lot of being Welsh, but the Squire, who is the real thing, and can trace his ancestry back to Bleddyn ap Cynfyn, takes it very lightly. You heard what happened last night when I asked him about it at dinner; he just laughed and said he supposed it was true, but that it had never made much difference one way or another. He likes me calling him ‘Squire’ though, especially when I explained about my fondness for Gryll Grange and Squire Gryll. I was astonished he’d never heard of it. D’you know, Monica, I don’t think these people understand or value what they have. I don’t suppose it’s twenty-five miles from here to the Mary Webb country, but would you believe that when I asked Mrs Hopkin-Griffiths about it, she had never heard of Mary Webb? And they’ve lived all their lives close to Shropshire, but they don’t seem to know anything about Housman. George Herbert? Unknown! Of course I don’t mean that they ought to develop those things as we do in the States. God forbid! But you’d think they’d know about them, wouldn’t you? I mean, what do you suppose gives shape and focus to their lives?”
“Do books give shape and focus to your life?”
“Why certainly. Don’t they yours?”
“No. You must be a very literary sort of person.”
“I wouldn’t say that. But you have to see and feel life in terms of something. Think; what makes you tick? What shapes your life?”
“Music, I suppose.”
“Well, there you are.”
“But not quite the way you mean. I hear music all the time. I’ve always done so, even though I’ve tried very hard not to.”
“Why did you do that?”
“When I was very small I once told my mother about it, and she said I must break myself of the habit, or it would drive me crazy. So I tried, but I didn’t succeed. The music is always at the back of my mind. It’s not particularly original, but on the other hand it isn’t anybody else’s. It’s just that I feel in terms of music. And when I can be quiet enough to get at what’s going on in my mind, the music is what gives me a clue.”
“Have you ever tried to write it down?”
“Oh no. And I don’t want to try. I’m not a composer. It’s just that music is a part of my way of feeling things. I only realized that a few months ago. And do you know that when I finally discovered that my mind worked that way, it set me free from that fear of going mad. And until I was free of the fear, I hadn’t really admitted to myself that it was there. But for years I had been listening to my inner music guiltily. It was like—oh, like being let out of a jail! You’re the only person I’ve ever told about that.”
&n
bsp; “I’m glad you told me, and I’ll keep it to myself. Look at that view! Now I’m appreciating it in literary terms, and you’re interpreting it in some kind of inner music which is incomprehensible to me. So I ask you again: what does it mean to the people who live here? By what means do they interpret it to themselves?”
“Do you know, I’ve just had the most extraordinary experience? Look at these hedges; do you know what they are?”
“Of course I do; they’re holly.”
“Yes, but—I’ve never seen holly before. Oh, I’ve seen a few sprigs, imported to Canada for decoration, and I’ve seen imitation holly. But this is the real thing—miles and miles of it—just growing beside the roads as a hedge. All my life I’ve associated holly with Christmas, but I never really knew till this minute why. I never understood that it was something real. I’ve seen it on paper wrapping, and in pictures, and I never knew why it went with Christmas, except that it was pretty. But here it is, in December, green leaves and red berries and all! It’s like suddenly getting a mysterious piece of a jigsaw puzzle to fit into place.”
Ripon solemnly removed his hat. “This is a sacred moment,” said he. “Sacred to me, anyhow, as a student of literature. You have just made the great discovery that behind every symbol there is a reality. For years you have accepted holly as a symbol of Christmas, unquestioningly, like a true Anglo-Saxon believer. And now, in a flash, you know why it is so. It is because, in this land which gave you your Christmas, holly is at its finest at this time of year. Perhaps we should cause a carved stone to be erected on this spot, to identify forever the place at which, for one human being out of the whole confused race, a symbol became a reality.”
A Mixture of Frailties tst-3 Page 18
