FullReads

“But won’t you tell him? It will do him such a lot of good. You know what a stronghold of Toryism this place is.”

A voice from an inner room cried: “Who is to see me?”

“Come this way,” said Mrs. Lloyd.

Ben, sitting at a table with writing paper and a Bible before him, rose.

“Messes Enos-Harries,” he said, “long since I met you. No odds if I mouth Welsh? There’s a language, dear me. This will not interest you in the least. Put your ambarelo in the cornel, Messes Enos-Harries, and your backhead in a chair. Making a lecture am I.”

Gwen told him the errand upon which she was bent, and while they two drank tea, Ben said: “Sing you a song, Messes Enos-Harries. Not forgotten have I your singing in Queen’s Hall on the Day of David the Saint. Inspire me wonderfully you did with the speech. I’ve been sad too, but you are a wedded female. Sing you now then. Push your cup and saucer under the chair.”

“No-no, not in tone am I,” Gwen feigned.

“How about a Welsh hymn? Come in will I at the repeats.”

“Messes Lloyd will sing the piano?”

“Go must she about her duties. She’s a handless poor dab.”

Gwen played and sang.

“Solemn pretty hymns have we,” said Ben. “Are we not large?” He moved and stood under a picture which hung on the wall–his knees touching and his feet apart–and the picture was that of Cromwell. “My friends say I am Cromwell and Milton rolled into one. The Great Father gave me a child and He took him back to the Palace. Religious am I. Want I do to live my life in the hills and valleys of Wales: listening to the anthem of creation, and searching for Him under the bark of the tree. And there I shall wait for the sound of the last trumpet.”

“A poet you are.” Gwen was astonished.

“You are a poetess, for sure me,” Ben said. He leaned over her. “Sparkling are your eyes. Deep brown are they–brown as the nut in the paws of the squirrel. Be you a bard and write about boys Cymru. Tell how they succeed in big London.”

“I will try,” said Gwen.

“Like you are and me. Think you do as I think.”

“Know you for long I would,” said Gwen.

“For ever,” cried Ben. “But wedded you are. Read you a bit of the lecture will I.” Having ended his reading and having sobbed over and praised that which he had read, Ben uttered: “Certain you come again. Come you and eat supper when the wife is not at home.”

Gwen quaked as she went to her car, and she sought a person who professed to tell fortunes, and whom she made to say: “A gentleman is in love with you. And he loves you for your brain. He is not your husband. He is more to you than your husband. I hear his silver voice holding spellbound hundreds of people; I see his majestic forehead and his auburn locks and the strands of his silken mustache.”

Those words made Gwen very happy, and she deceived herself that they were true. She composed verses and gave them to Ben.

“Not right to Nature is this,” said Ben. “The mother is wrong. How many children you have, Messes Enos-Harries?”

“Not one. The husband is weak and he is older much than I.”

“The Father has kept His most beautiful gift from you. Pity that is.” Tears gushed from Ben’s eyes. “If the marriage-maker had brought us together, children we would have jeweled with your eyes and crowned with your hair.”

“And your intellect,” said Gwen. “You will be the greatest Welshman.”

“Whisper will I now. A drag is the wife. Happy you are with the husband.”

“Why for you speak like that?”

“And for why we are not married?” Ben took Gwen in his arms and he kissed her and drew her body nigh to him; and in a little while he opened the door sharply and rebuked his wife that she waited thereat.