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According To The Pattern
by
“Sell you the horse too, my father bach.”
“Done much have I for you,” Abel said. “Fairish I must be with your sisters.”
“Why for you cavil like that, father? The money of mam came to Deinol. Am I not her son?”
Though his daughters, murmured–“We wake at the caw of the crows,” they said, “and weary in the young of the day”–Abel obeyed his son, who thereupon departed and came to Thornton East to the house of Catherine Jenkins, a widow woman, with whom he took the appearance of a burning lover.
Though he preached with a view at many English chapels in London, none called him. He caused Abel to sell cattle and mortgage Deinol for what it was worth and to give him all the money he received therefrom; he swore such hot love for Catherine that the woman pawned her furniture for his sake.
Intrigued that such scant fruit had come up from his sowings, Ben thought of further ways of stablishing himself. He inquired into the welfare of shop-assistants from women and girls who worshiped in Welsh chapels, and though he spoiled several in his quest, the abominations which oppressed these workers were made known to him. Shop-assistants carried abroad his fame and called him “Fiery Taffy.” Ben showed them how to rid themselves of their burden; “a burden,” he said, “packed full and overflowing by men of my race–the London Welsh drapers.”
The Welsh drapers were alarmed, and in a rage with Ben. They took the opinion of their big men and performed slyly. Enos-Harries–this is the Enos-Harries who has a drapery shop in Kingsend–sent to Ben this letter: “Take Dinner with Slf and Wife same, is Late Dinner I am pleased to inform. You we don’t live in Establishment only as per printed Note Heading. And Oblige.”
Enos-Harries showed Ben his house, and told him the cost of the treasures that were therein.
Also Harries said: “I have learned of you as a promising Welshman, and I want to do a good turn for you with a speech by you on St. David’s Day at Queen’s Hall. Now, then.”
“I am not important enough for that.”
“She’ll be a first-class miting in tip-top speeches. All the drapers and dairies shall be there in crowds. Three sirs shall come.”
“I am choked with engagements,” said Ben. “I am preaching very busy now just.”
“Well-well. Asked I did for you are a clean Cymro bach. As I repeat, only leading lines in speakers shall be there. Come now into the drawing-room and I’ll give you an intro to the Missus Enos-Harries. In evening dress she is–chik Paris Model. The invoice price was ten-ten.”
“Wait a bit,” Ben remarked. “I would be glad if I could speak.”
“Perhaps the next time we give you the invite. The Cymrodorion shall be in the miting.”
“As you plead, try I will.”
“Stretching a point am I,” Harries said. “This is a favor for you to address this glorious miting where the Welsh drapers will attend and the Missus Enos-Harries will sing ‘Land of my Fathers.'”
Ben withdrew from his fellows for three days, and on the third day–which was that of the Saint–he put on him a frock coat, and combed down his mustache over the blood-red swelling on his lip; and he cleaned his teeth. Here are some of the sayings that he spoke that night:
“Half an hour ago we were privileged to listen to the voice of a lovely lady–a voice as clear as a diamond ring. It inspired us one and all with a hireath for the dear old homeland–for dear Wales, for the land of our fathers and mothers too, for the land that is our heritage not by Act of Parliament but by the Act of God….
“Who ownss this land to-day? The squaire and the parshon. By what right? By the same right as the thief who steals your silk and your laces, and your milk and butter, and your reddy-made blousis. I know a farm of one hundred acres, each rod having been tamed from heatherland into a manna of abundance. Tamed by human bones and muscles–God’s invested capital in His chosen children. Six months ago this land–this fertile and rich land–was wrestled away from the owners. The bones of the living and the dead were wrestled away. I saw it three months ago–a wylderness. The clod had been squeesed of its zweat. The land belonged to my father, and his father, and his father, back to countless generations….