Testimonies. Patrick O’Brian
with the farm and to buy some eggs and milk for my supper.
The walk was quite as bad as I had foreseen; twice I scrambled over dry-stone walls, dislodging the top-most stones, and once there was a flurry of beasts – sheep, I imagined – as I came awkwardly over, and half-seen forms rushed wildly into the mist. After an indeterminate period of wandering, I found myself ankle-deep in a stream, with very little remaining idea of the relative position of my cottage or the farm. At this point a furious barking of dogs on my left served as a guide, and I followed the stream down to a path, from which I could see the lamp-lit windows of the farm.
I had some difficulty in finding the right door: the darkness was filled with angry dogs, whose clamour scattered my wits; but in time my knocking brought a staring gowk of a boy. He stood in the vague light of a glimmer that reached the passage from a lighted room behind; he fled at the sound of my voice, leaving me half in and half out, still exposed to the attack of the dogs. I had always been foolishly timid with animals; and these, conscious of their advantage, bullied me without mercy. A clash of boots in the farmyard, and a man’s angry voice raised in Welsh oaths rescued me from this persecution; the dogs ceased, and the unseen figure addressed me, again in Welsh. In my agitation I could think of nothing better to say than, ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Oh; it is the gentleman from Hafod. Walk in, mister,’ he said; and as he spoke the far door opened and the light showed me the way to the kitchen. As I came in two old people stood up and turned expectant, even anxious faces toward me.
‘It is the gentleman from Hafod,’ said the man behind me; but they were flustered, and did not understand. He spoke again, quickly, in an undertone in Welsh, and their faces changed. The old lady hurried across the fireplace and placed the good chair by it, dislodging a cat and patting the cushion.
‘Sit down, mister,’ she said, with a hesitant, unfinished gesture toward the chair, and the men said, ‘Sit down.’ She was very slight and frail; long ago she must have been beautiful; her faded blue eyes behind their steel-rimmed spectacles had the kindest expression and her face was set in the wrinkles that are caused by having worn a pleasant look for a lifetime. She stood with her hands folded and murmured, ‘Well, well,’ in a gentle, embarrassed tone.
It was an enormous room, and the far walls hardly threw back the light of the lamp on the table. I had a general impression of great length and breadth, beams, two dressers with rows of plates, a long white table in the middle, and an undulating slate floor; fire and brass at my left hand, and a high mantelpiece with a clock, and a gun hanging above it.
The old man was sitting on a dark, narrow bench that ran along the wall by the window: the youth I had seen first stood awkwardly by the angle of the far dresser, staring at me without a movement. There was an uncomfortable moment of silence before the old man said, ‘How you like Wales?’ He spoke in a harsh, grating voice, with so strong an accent that the simple phrase was barely comprehensible. His three-toothed stubbly face was advanced with an expectant smile, so pleasant that I felt my own answering smile spread even before I had quite pieced together the words. I said that I liked it very much, and that this valley in particular delighted me. The old man did not understand more than the general drift: he said, ‘Oh?’ in the deaf tone of incomprehension, and after a moment he said that he had been in the valley for forty-seven years.
‘It is telling me she is seeing a light in Hafod,’ said the old lady. I told them that I had not expected to come until tomorrow (which they knew), that I had left my coming down to the farm later than I had meant, and that I had found it difficult to follow the right path. The three of them – for the younger man had finished with his boots and had come forward – listened with close attention, the strained attention of those listening to an unfamiliar voice talking a foreign language. Halfway through my recital I saw the folding intelligence die out of the eyes of the old people, but the younger man understood me very well. They were concerned that I had not been able to strike the path at once, and described the alternate ways.
‘You must go by the beudy and then behind the ty gwair: you cannot miss it,’ said the young man, and the elders, with their faces turned toward him, nodded at the words. A blurting guffaw came from the youth by the dresser and cut the repeated direction short: finding himself observed and at a disadvantage, the youth fell silent as suddenly as he had burst out, and after a wretched moment squeezed himself out through the door.
The younger man pulled up a chair and sat by me. We talked about the cottage, postal deliveries, buses – the commonplaces of new arrival. He was a tall man, spare, red-haired with pale eyes and a thin, stretched skin: a reddish stubble on his chin, and papery, windbitten ears. His English was good, but he was nervous, and made mistakes. He listened attentively, leaning forward when I spoke, and answered my questions with anxious care: I felt that if a great land-owner of the Middle Ages had come into a farmhouse, this was the manner in which he would have been answered. I hoped that they had not some mistaken idea – did not suppose me to be a person of importance.
The others did not join in any more, though the old lady hovered by, looking at her son with a proud smile: I presumed he was her son, although there was no likeness between them. I was talking about the length of the journey (an unusually tedious train and several changes) when the door opened and a young woman came in, carrying a pile of clothes. I broke off, and the young man said, ‘Bronwen, here is the gentleman from Hafod.’
She was obviously surprised and a little put about: her hand went up to her hair. But she put the clothes down on the dresser and came forward to meet me with none of the awkwardness that I should have shown in the same case. It was charming to see her come the length of the room: she was about thirty – not a girl – but she held herself with adolescent grace. She was extraordinarily good-looking. We shook hands, and she offered me a cup of tea; I refused, saying that I had just come down in the hope of being allowed to buy some milk and eggs. She spoke the purest English of the four, and I noticed that she stood with her hands folded in front of her while I was speaking; it was a flattering attitude – it gave the impression that what was being said was of great interest and importance.
We talked a little more and then, accompanied by the unwilling, horror-struck youth with a hurricane-lamp to show me the way, I carried my eggs and milk up the hill to Hafod.
It was strange that I had not been able to hit the right path; nothing could have been plainer, and at least once on my way down I must have crossed it. I said something of this nature to the youth, choosing easy words and speaking distinctly; but he made no reply. Near the door of Hafod he left me suddenly, with a guttural laugh.
After my supper I pushed the crocks to one side and sat in front of the stove – it was drawing well and I had its doors open. The chair was comfortable, and as I sat there smoking, I had a very real sense of happiness. A good meal and creature comfort after a long and tiring day had something to do with it, but more came from a recollection of that good family down there at the farm. Perhaps it was because my own life had had so little domesticity in it that I appreciated it as much as I did, but I am sure that the most hag-ridden family man would have been affected by the gentle kindness, the fittingness (if decency is too pedantic) of the life of those people as I had seen them that evening. It may be that the lamplight had something to do with the strength of the impression, the lamplight and the glowing fire: an old man cannot look patriarchal under an electric bulb, but in the limited radiance of a lamp the attitudes of people, drawn closer of necessity, have a new significance, and their faces borrow character.
I was not sure of the relationships: at one time during the evening I had thought that the old man was employed by the younger, but at another it seemed that he possessed the farm. The young woman, the lovely young woman Bronwen, was almost certainly the young man’s wife, though it was not impossible that she was the old lady’s daughter. They had the confusing habit of referring to one another as Mr Vaughan or Mrs Vaughan, and as they all shared the same surname this told me nothing. It is true that I had heard the old people called Nain and Taid –grandmother and grandfather – but that might have been no more than the local usage, implying no actual relationship. One thing that was clear was that the youth was the farm servant. They spoke of him as the gwas when they said that he would light me home. He came from a family in the village,