Part 7 (1/2)
He loved ballad lore, rural festivities, rambling, and all those light modes of pa.s.sing his time that were most allied to idleness.
But in this dreary house, not a book was to be seen nor the sound of mirth, harp, or song, ever heard; still Twm did not despond; his good humour had the effect of brightening, by many a shade, the desponding apprehensions of Moses; and more than once he actually won a smile from one or two of the younger daughters of the house, who, however, soon rebuked themselves for descending to be pleased with anything that a parish apprentice boy could advance.
In the long winter evenings, when no one could possibly invent a task or job for them, Twm and Moses would be allowed to sit a little by the turf fire; when the latter would venture to narrate some hungry tale of gastronomic heroism, in which his fancy revelled, Twm would recite ghost stories that terrified the damsels; and war tales of olden times that he had heard from Ianto Gwyn, or his master, Rhys, that astonished and amused his auditors, at least part of them, for Sheeny Greeg and her echo Shaan disdained to be among the number, but cried shame on him for repeating such audacious lies.
Miserly people often overshoot their mark, and it was so in this farm-house. Old Elwes would have called Morris Greeg a worthy disciple, whilst other misers of even greater note would have looked upon the farm-house and its ways as the very acme of human felicity. But ”greed”
begets greater evils; and when Morris was by chance called away, the girls indulged themselves in the best way they could find. Theft was largely patronized, and as we should charitably think not without very reasonable excuse. One fair, day when Morris and Sheeny had betaken themselves to a distant corn and cattle mart, the girls, as usual, commenced their preparation for a regular junketing. Twm and Moses, whom they kept at the humble distance of lowly menials, were out together, mending some gaps in the hedges, when Moses sniffing the wind that blew from the direction of the house, with the gifted nose of a dog of the chase, called out with ecstacy, ”Twm, I smell pan-cake!”
”So do I, Moses,” returned our little hero, expanding his nostrils with jocular comicality, ”Ha!” cried Moses, with an envious snarl, ”The selfish wenches of the house are treating their dainty chops with something nice.”
”Aye!” retorted Twm, quoting from some learned Theban, ”when the cat's away the mice will play. But stop thee here, Moses, and see if I don't bring thee a share of what is going, in five minutes.” Moses grinned and licked his lips in eager antic.i.p.ation as Twm hurried off. He entered the house with a sudden startling step, and a bundle of firewood under his arm as an excuse for the intrusion. All was panic within an instant.
Two of the girls dashed their jug of sweetened small beer into the pail of hog's wash, as they heard the first rattle of the wooden latch on Twm's entrance; Shaan turned pale as the unfried pancake before her, so great was their fear that their parents had returned in the midst of their underhand clandestine doings. ”It is only that devil Twm Shon Catty,” cried Shaan, who was the first to recover from the general terror; ”Never mind, girls, go and sweeten more beer, for father and mother can't be home before night.”
”Aye, go and sweeten more beer, and let poor Moses and I have a share of your beer and pancakes,” cried Twm, pointedly eyeing a raised heap of them in a wooden platter before the fire;-”let _us_ have a part, and we won't tell.”
”Get along to thy work, thou saucy cur!” cried Shaan, striking him with all her strength with the hot frying-pan. ”Not till I have our share to take with me,” cried our hero, making a grasping s.n.a.t.c.h at the heaped pancakes, which he bore off in spite of the united efforts of the la.s.ses to re-capture them. His manner of bestowing them was more commendable on the score of security than of delicacy, as the greater portion was thrust into his s.h.i.+rt-breast and breeches pockets; off he ran over the wooden bridge and along the path through the wood.
In this chase the great heat against his breast gave him considerable pain, and almost arrested his steps, half persuaded to throw away the larded delicacy; St. Vitus never danced faster nor more spasmodically under his pains, than did our hero under the effects of his hot pancakes.
They gave him shocks equal in intensity to those from the voltaic pile; in fact he may be said to have been a Salamander enduring the scorchings of heat, but with this difference.-Twm Shon Catty could not well bear them, whereas the Salamander was represented as rather enjoying them than otherwise.
But, like the Spartan boy, Twm heroically determined to bear the self-inflicted torture, and endure to the last. However, it must be confessed, to the minoration of his fame, that not having been favoured with so stoical an education as the aforesaid Lacedemonian, he yielded to nature, and ran and roared, and roared and ran, till he outran his pursuers, who returned breathless home, and he as breathless joined young Moses, where, in their secret haunt, they enjoyed the fruit of his dexterity.
The spot they occupied was one of the discoveries of Moses, before Twm's arrival, the craggy recesses of which became the depositaries of his filching achievements, and which recurring to in after years, he called his larder. It was situated above the torrent, beside the mountain, at the extreme end of the farm-just where the wilderness had refused to yield another patch to add to former acc.u.mulation. But these gormandizing youths were at present too busily engaged to remark on either the beauties or the horrors of the scene.
CHAPTER XII.
STUDIES piscatorial and fleshy, and certain tricks connected therewith.
Pork capers-a new dish.
Emboldened by the impunity with which they had foraged for themselves during the last three months that had followed the doings in our last chapter, both Twm and Moses grew somewhat daring in their gastronomical speculations. Moses, among his restless peerings for something to gratify appet.i.te, had peeped into one of the mountain pools, and joyfully detected the existence of a certain sizeable fish there. This was a discovery which made the young Jew's mouth water, and his eyes distend with visions of future work for the jaws! Here was an El Dorado of good food, and Moses went into proportionate rapture at the prospect. Twm annoyed him not a little, by laughing at his futile attempts to spear a pike with the dull and clumsy p.r.o.ngs of a dungfork.
Our hero was more successful in his warfare on the trout and eels that abounded in a brook which ran through one of the tarns. Without any contrivance that resembled fis.h.i.+ng-tackle in the most remote degree, he remarked a sweeping curve, of a horse-shoe shape, in one part of the brook, and determined, with the a.s.sistance of Moses, on sporting his engineering skill, in cutting a new channel for the water, so that it might for the future, run a straight course, and leave the horseshoe portion of it dry. This at different intervals, with no small labour, they at last effected; and when the flood ran along the new channel, its deserted curve became a mess of slimy mud. Into this, with naked feet, they soon waded, and groping cautiously about, succeeded in gathering an abundant harvest of trout and eels. Moses was noisy in his raptures at the result, and so anxious to have them immediately cooked, that he could scarcely wait for that tedious progress.
However, they soon kindled a fire by rubbing together some rotten wood, and with the aid of some dry turf, the quarry under the precipice of Allt y Craig became a temporary heath of blazing beauty. Utterly void of any culinary utensils, they resolved on the primitive mode of broiling their fish on hot stones, and Moses, all alacrity, proceeded on the task of preparing them.
But, alas, for the sequel of their adventure! Before they could realize their project, the dark countenance of Morris Greeg paralyzed their efforts, as the serpent's gaze is said to fascinate its victim. The angry farmer gruffly demanded where they had been, how they had dared to idle away their time, and what was the meaning of that wasteful fire against the rock. The ready lie, or presence of mind as it is favourably called, of Twm and Moses soon supplied answers, such as they were. Twm said, that hearing the good woman of the house complain of a visit from the old enemy the cholic, he determined to catch a dish of fish for her, to drive it away, pointing triumphantly to his piscatory store; thus beating a retreat with all the diplomacy and tact of a good general, who when he finds he cannot obtain a victory, at any rate manages to gain credit for a wise 'retrograde.'
Moses followed up Twm's a.s.sertion by declaring that the fire was to frighten away the crows and the kites that might take fancy to the young lambs, or the wheat in the neighbouring field; a manifestation of care over his master's property, which had, at any rate, the claim of originality to back it. Morris was as great an economist of his words as in matters of worldly goods, and therefore, whatever he thought, he did not waste breath with reply; but suddenly ordered Moses to carry the fish into the house, and Twm to give some hay to the cows. ”And be sure,”
quoth the careful farmer, ”that you give most hay to the cow that gives most milk.”
”I will be sure of it!” replied Twm pointedly, and with sulky asperity.
The next moment, to the great astonishment, and greater anger of Morris Greeg, he threw as much hay as his two arms could embrace, under the water-spout. ”There,” cried the redoubted son of Catty, ”that is the cow which gives me most milk, for that cursed broth and porridge is almost wholly made from this never-failing animal.”
A precipitous retreat of course, followed this explanation, and Morris Greeg was left alone to chew the cud of his resentment. At dinner the next day, the wrath of Morris having evaporated, all grew smooth again.
While Twm and Moses bolted their insipid mess of dovery, otherwise called burgoo, the gratification was rather questionable in having as their share merely the smell of the fried fish, on which Sheeny and Shaan with the younger daughters were regaling, and praising the flavour at every mouthful they swallowed. Moses ground his teeth, and would have impaled them in the excess of his rage, for the loss of his expected feast. Twm said nothing, but inwardly resolved on faring better, and that very speedily. Shaan grinned like a hyena as she treated her dainty gums with fish after fish, and spitefully enjoyed their mortification, as she whispered to Twm, ”now we are even for the pancakes.”