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Gwen Wynn: A Romance of the Wye

CHAPTER XVII
THE "CORPSE CANDLE."

Jack Wingate lives in a little cottage whose bit of garden ground "brinks" the country road where the latter trends close to the Wye at one of its sharpest sinuosities. The cottage is on the convex side of the bend, having the river at back, with a deep drain, or wash, running up almost to its walls, and forming a fence to one side of the garden. This gives the waterman another and more needed advantage – a convenient docking place for his boat. There the Mary, moored, swings to her painter in safety; and when a rise in the river threatens, he is at hand to see she be not swept off. To guard against such catastrophe he will start up from his bed at any hour of the night, having more than one reason to be careful of the boat; for, besides being his gagne-pain, it bears the name, by himself given, of her the thought of whom sweetens his toil and makes his labour light. For her he bends industriously to his oar, as though he believed every stroke made and every boat's length gained was bringing him nearer to Mary Morgan. And in a sense so is it, whichever way the boat's head may be turned; the farther he rows her, the grander grows that heap of gold he is hoarding up against the day when he hopes to become a Benedict. He has a belief that if he could but display before the eyes of Farmer Morgan sufficient money to take a little farm for himself and stock it, he might then remove all obstacles between him and Mary – mother's objections and sinister and sacerdotal influence included.

He is aware of the difference of rank – that social chasm between – being oft bitterly reminded of it; but emboldened by Mary's smiles, he has little fear but that he will yet be able to bridge it.

Favouring the programme thus traced out, there is, fortunately, no great strain on his resources by way of drawback; only the maintaining of his own mother, a frugal dame – thrifty besides – who, instead of adding to the current expenses, rather curtails them by the adroit handling of her needle. It would have been a distaff in the olden days.

Thus helped in his housekeeping, the young waterman is enabled to put away almost every shilling he earns by his oar, and this same summer all through till autumn, which it now is, has been more than usually profitable to him, by reason of his so often having Captain Ryecroft as his fare; for although the Hussar officer no longer goes salmon fishing – he has somehow been spoilt for that – there are other excursions upon which he requires the boat, and as ever generously, even lavishly, pays for it.

From one of these the young waterman has but returned; and, after carefully bestowing the Mary at her moorings, stepped inside the cottage. It is Saturday – within one hour of sundown – that same Saturday spoken of "at the Harvest Home." But though Jack is just home, he shows no sign of an intention to stay there; instead, behaves as if he intended going out again, though not in his boat.

And he does so intend, for a purpose unsuspected by his mother, – to keep that appointment made hurriedly and in a half whisper, amid the fracas of the fireworks.

The good dame had already set the table for tea, ready against his arrival, covered it with a cloth, snow-white of course. The tea-things superimposed, in addition a dining plate, knife and fork, these for a succulent beefsteak heard hissing on the gridiron almost as soon as the Mary made appearance at the mouth of the wash, and, soon as the boat was docked, done. It is now on the table, alongside the teapot; its savoury odour, mingling with the fragrance of the freshly "drawn" tea, fills the cottage kitchen with a perfume to delight the gods.

For all, it gives no gratification to Jack Wingate the waterman. The appetizing smell of the meat, and the more ethereal aroma of the Chinese shrub, are alike lost upon him. Appetite he has none, and his thoughts are elsewhere.

Less from observing his abstraction, than the slow, negligent movements of his knife and fork, the mother asks —

"What's the matter with ye, Jack? Ye don't eat!"

"I ain't hungry, mother."

"But ye been out since mornin', and tooked nothing wi' you!"

"True; but you forget who I ha' been out with. The captain ain't the man to let his boatman be a hungered. We war down the day far as Symond's yat, where he treated me to dinner at the hotel. The daintiest kind o' dinner, too. No wonder at my not havin' much care for eatin' now – nice as you've made things, mother."

Notwithstanding the compliment, the old lady is little satisfied – less as she observes the continued abstraction of his manner. He fidgets uneasily in his chair, every now and then giving a glance at the little Dutch clock suspended against the wall, which in loud ticking seems to say, "You'll be late – you'll be late." She suspects something of the cause, but inquires nothing of it. Instead, she but observes, speaking of the patron: —

"He be very good to ye, Jack."

"Ah! that he be; good to every one as comes nigh o' him – and's desarvin' it."

"But ain't he stayin' in the neighbourhood longer than he first spoke of doin'?"

"Maybe he is. Grand gentry such as he ain't like us poor folk. They can go and come whens'ever it please 'em. I suppose he have his reasons for remaining."

"Now, Jack, you know he have, an' I've heerd something about 'em myself."

"What have you heard, mother?"

"Oh, what! Ye han't been a rowin' him up and down the river now nigh on five months without findin' out. An' if you haven't, others have. It's goin' all about that he's after a young lady as lives somewhere below. Tidy girl, they say, tho' I never seed her myself. Is it so, my son? Say!"

"Well, mother, since you've put it straight at me in that way, I won't deny it to you, tho' I'm in a manner bound to saycrecy wi' others. It be true that the Captain have some notion o' such a lady."

"There be a story, too, o' her bein' nigh drownded an' his saving her out o' a boat. Now, Jack, whose boat could that be if it wa'nt your'n?"

"'Twor mine, mother; that's true enough. I would a-told you long ago, but he asked me not to talk o' the thing. Besides, I didn't suppose you'd care to hear about it."

"Well," she says, satisfied, "tan't much to me, nor you neyther, Jack; only as the Captain being so kind, we'd both like to know the best about him. If he have took a fancy for the young lady, I hope she return it. She ought after his doin' what he did for her. I han't heerd her name; what be it?"

"She's a Miss Wynn, mother. A very rich heiress. 'Deed I b'lieve she ain't a heiress any longer, or won't be, after next Thursday, sin' that day she comes o' age. An' that night there's to be a big party at her place, dancin' an' all sorts o' festivities. I know it because the Captain's goin' there, an' has bespoke the boat to take him."

"Wynn, eh? That be a Welsh name. Wonder if she's any kin o' the great Sir Watkin."

"Can't say, mother. I believe there be several branches o' the Wynn family."

"Yes, and all o' the good sort. If she be one o' the Welsh Wynns, the Captain can't go far astray in having her for his wife."

Mrs. Wingate is herself of Cymric ancestry, originally from the shire of Pembroke, but married to a man of Montgomery, where Jack was born. It is only of late, in her widowhood, she has become a resident of Herefordshire.

"So you think he have a notion o' her, Jack?"

"More'n that, mother. I may as well tell ye; he be dead in love wi' her. An' if you seed the young lady herself, ye wouldn't wonder at it. She be most as good-looking as – "

Jack suddenly interrupted himself on the edge of a revelation he would rather not make, to his mother nor anyone else. For he has hitherto been as careful in keeping his own secret as that of his patron.

"As who?" she asks, looking him straight in the face, and with an expression in her eyes of no common interest – that of maternal solicitude.

"Who? – well – " he answers confusedly; "I wor goin' to mention the name o' a girl who the people 'bout here think the best lookin' o' any in the neighbourhood – "

"An' nobody more'n yourself, my son. You needn't gie her name. I know it."

"Oh, mother! what d'ye mean?" he stammers out, with eyes on the but half-eaten beefsteak. "I take it they've been tellin' ye some stories about me."

"No, they han't. Nobody's sayed a word about ye relatin' to that. I've seed it for myself, long since, though you've tried to hide it. I'm not goin' to blame ye eyther, for I believe she be a tidy proper girl. But she's far aboon you, my son; and ye maun mind how you behave yourself. If the young lady be anythin' likes good-lookin' as Mary Morgan – "

"Yes, mother! that's the strangest thing o' all – "

He interrupts her, speaking excitedly; again interrupting himself.

"What's strangest?" she inquires, with a look of wonderment.

"Never mind, mother! I'll tell you all about it some other time. I can't now; you see its nigh nine o' the clock."

"Well; an' what if 't be?"

"Because I may be too late."

"Too late for what? Surely you arn't goin' out again the night?" She asks this, seeing him rise up from his chair.

"I must, mother."

"But why?"

"Well, the boat's painter's got frailed, and I want a bit o' whipcord to lap it with. They have the thing at the Ferry shop, and I must get there afores they shut up."

A fib, perhaps pardonable, as the thing he designs lapping is not his boat's painter, but the waist of Mary Morgan, and not with slender whipcord, but his own stout arms.

"Why won't it do in the mornin'?" asks the ill-satisfied mother.

"Well, ye see, there's no knowin' but that somebody may come after the boat. The Captain mayent but he may, changin' his mind. Anyhow, he'll want her to go down to them grand doin's at Llangorren Court?"

"Llangorren Court?"

"Yes; that's where the young lady lives."

"That's to be on Thursday, ye sayed?"

"True; but, then, there may come a fare the morrow, an' what if there do? 'Tain't the painter only as wants splicing there's a bit o' leak sprung close to the cutwater, and I must hae some pitch to pay it."

If Jack's mother would only step out, and down to the ditch where the Mary is moored, with a look at the boat, she would make him out a liar. Its painter is smooth and clean as a piece of gimp, not a strand unravelled – while but two or three gallons of bilge water at the boat's bottom attest to there being little or no leakage.

But she, good dame, is not thus suspicious, instead so reliant on her son's truthfulness, that without questioning further, she consents to his going, only with a proviso against his staying, thus appealingly put —

"Ye won't be gone long, my son! I know ye won't!"

"Indeed I shan't, mother. But why be you so partic'lar about my goin' out – this night more'n any other?"

"Because, Jack, this day, more'n most others, I've been feelin' bothered like, and a bit frightened."

"Frightened o' what? There han't been nobody to the house – has there?"

"No; ne'er a rover since you left me in the mornin'."

"Then what's been a scarin' ye, mother?"

"'Deed, I don't know, unless it ha' been brought on by the dream I had last night. 'Twer a dreadful unpleasant one. I didn't tell you o' it 'fore ye went out, thinkin' it might worry ye."

"Tell me now, mother."

"It hadn't nought to do wi' us ourselves, after all. Only concernin' them as live nearest us."

"Ha! the Morgans?"

"Yes; the Morgans."

"Oh, mother, what did you dream about them?"

"That I were standin' on the big hill above their house, in the middle o' the night, wi' black darkness all round me; and there lookin' down what should I see comin' out o' their door?"

"What?"

"The canwyll corph!"

"The canwyll corph?"

"Yes, my son; I seed it – that is I dreamed I seed it – coming just out o' the farmhouse door, then through the yard, and over the foot-plank at the bottom o' the orchard, when it went flarin' up the meadows straight towards the ferry. Though ye can't see that from the hill, I dreamed I did; an' seed the candle go on to the chapel an' into the buryin' ground. That woked me."

"What nonsense, mother! A ridiklous superstition! I thought you'd left all that sort o' stuff behind, in the mountains o' Montgomery, or Pembrokeshire, where the thing comes from, as I've heerd you say."

"No, my son; it's not stuff, nor superstition neyther; though English people say that to put slur upon us Welsh. Your father before ye believed in the Canwyll Corph, and wi' more reason ought I, your mother. I never told you, Jack, but the night before your father died I seed it go past our own door, and on to the graveyard o' the church where he now lies. Sure as we stand here there be some one doomed in the house o' Evan Morgan. There be only three in the family. I do hope it an't her as ye might some day be wantin' me to call daughter."

"Mother! You'll drive me mad! I tell ye it's all nonsense. Mary Morgan be at this moment healthy and strong – most as much as myself. If the dead candle ye've been dreamin' about were all o' it true, it couldn't be a burnin' for her. More like for Mrs. Morgan, who's half daft by believing in church candles and such things – enough to turn her crazy, if it doesn't kill her outright. As for you, my dear mother, don't let the dream bother you the least bit. An' ye mustn't be feeling lonely, as I shan't be long gone. I'll be back by ten sure."

Saying which, he sets his straw hat jauntily on his thick curly hair, gives his guernsey a straightening twitch, and, with a last cheering look and encouraging word to his mother, steps out into the night.

Left alone, she feels lonely withal, and more than ever afraid. Instead of sitting down to her needle, or making to remove the tea-things, she goes to the door, and there stays, standing on its threshold and peering into the darkness – for it is a pitch dark night – she sees, or fancies, a light moving across the meadows, as if it came from Farmer Morgan's house, and going in the direction of Rugg's Ferry. While she continues gazing, it twice crosses the Wye, by reason of the river's bend.

As no mortal hand could thus carry it, surely it is the canwyll corph!

CHAPTER XVIII
A CAT IN THE CUPBOARD

Evan Morgan is a tenant-farmer, holding Abergann. By Herefordshire custom, every farm or its stead, has a distinctive appellation. Like the land belonging to Glyngog, that of Abergann lies against the sides of a sloping glen – one of the hundreds or thousands of lateral ravines that run into the valley of the Wye. But, unlike the old manor-house, the domicile of the farmer is at the glen's bottom, and near the river's bank; nearer yet to a small influent stream, rapid and brawling, which sweeps past the lower end of the orchard in a channel worn deep into the soft sandstone.

Though with the usual imposing array of enclosure walls, the dwelling itself is not large, nor the outbuildings extensive; for the arable acreage is limited. This because the ridges around are too high pitched for ploughing, and if ploughed would be unproductive. They are not even in pasture, but overgrown with woods; less for the sake of the timber, which is only scrub, than as a covert for foxes. They are held in hand by Evan Morgan's landlord – a noted Nimrod.

For the same reason the farmhouse stands in a solitary spot, remote from any other dwelling. The nearest is the cottage of the Wingates – distant about half a mile, but neither visible from the other. Nor is there any direct road between, only a footpath, which crosses the brook at the bottom of the orchard, thence cunning over a wooded ridge to the main highway. The last, after passing close to the cottage, as already said, is deflected away from the river by this same ridge, so that when Evan Morgan would drive anywhere beyond the boundaries of his farm, he must pass out through a long lane, so narrow that were he to meet any one driving in, there would be a dead-lock. However, there is no danger; as the only vehicles having occasion to use this thoroughfare are his own farm waggon and a lighter "trap" in which he goes to market, and occasionally with his wife and daughter to merry-makings.

When the three are in it there is none of his family at home. For he has but one child – a daughter. Nor would he long have her were a half-score of young fellows allowed their way. At least this number would be willing to take her off his hands, and give her a home elsewhere. Remote as is the farmhouse of Abergann, and narrow the lane leading to it, there are many who would be glad to visit there, if invited.

In truth a fine girl is Mary Morgan, tall, bright-haired, and with blooming cheeks, beside which red rose leaves would seem fade. Living in a town she would be its talk; in a village its belle. Even from that secluded glen has the fame of her beauty gone forth and afar. Of husbands she could have her choice, and among men much richer than her father.

In her heart she has chosen one, not only much poorer, but lower in social rank – Jack Wingate. She loves the young waterman, and wants to be his wife; but knows she cannot without the consent of her parents. Not that either has signified opposition, since they have never been asked. Her longings in that direction she has kept secret from them. Nor does she so much dread refusal by the father. Evan Morgan had been himself poor – began life as a farm labourer – and, though now an employer of such, his pride had not kept pace with his prosperity. Instead, he is, as ever, the same modest, unpresuming man, of which the lower middle classes of the English people present many noble examples. From him Jack Wingate would have little to fear on the score of poverty. He is well acquainted with the young waterman's character, knows it to be good, and has observed the efforts he is making to better his condition in life; it may be with suspicion of the motive, at all events, admiringly – remembering his own. And although a Roman Catholic, he is anything but bigoted. Were he the only one to be consulted, his daughter might wed with the man upon whom she has fixed her affections, at any time it pleases them – ay, at any place, too, even within the walls of a Protestant Church! By him neither would Jack Wingate be rejected on the score of religion.

Very different with his wife. Of all the worshippers who compose the congregation at the Rugg's Ferry Chapel, none bend the knee to Baal as low as she; and over no one does Father Rogier exercise such influence. Baneful it is like to be; since not only has he control of the mother's conduct, but through that may also blight the happiness of the daughter.

Apart from religious fanaticism, Mrs. Morgan is not a bad woman – only a weak one. As her husband, she is of humble birth, and small beginnings; like him, too, neither has prosperity affected her in the sense of worldly ambition. Perhaps better if it had. Instead of spoiling, a little social pride might have been a bar to the dangerous aspirations of Richard Dempsey – even with the priest standing sponsor for him. But she has none, her whole soul being absorbed by blind devotion to a faith which scruples not at anything that may assist in its propagandism.

It is the Saturday succeeding the festival of the Harvest Home, a little after sunset, and the priest is expected at Abergann. He is a frequent visitor there; by Mrs. Morgan ever made welcome, and treated to the best cheer the farmhouse can afford; plate, knife, and fork always placed for him. And, to do him justice, he may be deemed in a way worthy of such hospitality; for he is, in truth, a most entertaining personage; can converse on any subject, and suit his conversation to the company, whether high or low. As much at home with the wife of the Welsh farmer as with the French ex-cocotte, and equally so in the companionship of Dick Dempsey, the poacher. In his hours of far niente all are alike to him.

This night he is to take supper at Abergann, and Mrs. Morgan, seated in the farmhouse parlour, awaits his arrival. A snug little apartment, tastefully furnished, but with a certain air of austerity, observable in Roman Catholic houses; this by reason of some pictures of saints hanging against the walls, an image of the Virgin and, standing niche-like in a corner, one of the Crucifixion over the mantel-shelf, with crosses upon books, and other like symbols.

It is near nine o'clock, and the table is already set out. On grand occasions, as this, the farmhouse parlour is transformed into dining or supper room, indifferently. The meal intended to be eaten now is more of the former, differing in there being a tea-tray upon the table, with a full service of cups and saucers, as also in the lateness of the hour. But the odoriferous steam escaping from the kitchen, drifted into the parlour when its door is opened, tells of something in preparation more substantial than a cup of tea, with its usual accompaniment of bread and butter. And there is a fat capon roasting upon the spit, with a frying-pan full of sausages on the dresser, ready to be clapped upon the fire at the proper moment – as soon as the expected guest makes his appearance.

And in addition to the tea-things, there is a decanter of sherry on the table, and will be another of brandy when brought on – Father Rogier's favourite tipple, as Mrs. Morgan has reason to know. There is a full bottle of this – Cognac of best brand – in the larder cupboard, still corked as it came from the "Welsh Harp," where it cost six shillings – the Rugg's Ferry hostelry, as already intimated, dealing in drinks of a rather costly kind. Mary has been directed to draw the cork, decant, and bring the brandy in, and for this purpose has just gone off to the larder. Thence instantly returning, but without either decanter or Cognac! Instead, with a tale which sends a thrill of consternation through her mother's heart. The cat has been in the cupboard, and there made havoc – upset the brandy bottle, and sent it rolling off the shelf on the stone flags of the floor! Broken, of course, and the contents —

No need for further explanation. Mrs. Morgan does not seek it. Nor does she stay to reflect on the disaster, but how it may be remedied. It will not mend matters to chastise the cat, nor cry over the spilt brandy, any more than if it were milk.

On short reflection she sees but one way to restore the broken bottle – by sending to the "Welsh Harp" for a whole one.

True, it will cost another six shillings, but she recks not of the expense. She is more troubled about a messenger. Where, and how, is one to be had? The farm labourers have long since left. They are all Benedicts, on board wages, and have departed for their respective wives and homes. There is a cowboy, yet he is also absent; gone to fetch the kine from a far-off pasturing place, and not be back in time; while the one female domestic maid-of-all-work is busy in the kitchen, up to her ears among pots and pans, her face at a red heat over the range. She could not possibly be spared. "It's very vexatious!" exclaims Mrs. Morgan, in a state of lively perplexity.

"It is indeed!" assents her daughter.

A truthful girl, Mary, in the main; but just now the opposite. For she is not vexed by the occurrence, nor does she deem it a disaster – quite the contrary. And she knows it was no accident, having herself brought it about. It was her own soft fingers, not the cat's claws, that swept that bottle from the shelf, sending it smash upon the stones! Tipped over by no maladroit handling of corkscrew, but downright deliberate intention! A stratagem that may enable her to keep the appointment made among the fireworks – that threat when she told Jack Wingate she would "find a way."

Thus is she finding it; and in furtherance she leaves her mother no time to consider longer about a messenger.

"I'll go!" she says, offering herself as one.

The deceit unsuspected, and only the willingness appreciated, Mrs. Morgan rejoins:

"Do! that's a dear girl! It's very good of you, Mary. Here's the money."

While the delighted mother is counting out the shillings, the dutiful daughter whips on her cloak – the night is chilly – and adjusts her hat, the best holiday one, on her head; all the time thinking to herself how cleverly she has done the trick. And with a smile of pardonable deception upon her face, she trips lightly across the threshold, and on through the little flower garden in front.

Outside the gate, at an angle of the enclosure wall, she stops, and stands considering. There are two ways to the Ferry, here forking – the long lane and the shorter footpath. Which is she to take? The path leads down along the side of the orchard, and across the brook by the bridge – only a single plank. This spanning the stream, and originally fixed to the rock at both ends, has of late come loose, and is not safe to be traversed, even by day. At night it is dangerous – still more on one dark as this. And danger of no common kind at any time. The channel through which the stream runs is twenty feet deep, with rough boulders in its bed. One falling from above would at least get broken bones. No fear of that to-night, but something as bad, if not worse. For it has been raining throughout the earlier hours of the day, and there in the brook, now a raging torrent. One dropping into it would be swept on to the river, and there surely drowned, if not before.

It is no dread of any of these dangers which causes Mary Morgan to stand considering which route she will take. She has stepped that plank on nights dark as this, even since it became detached from the fastenings, and is well acquainted with its ways. Were there nought else, she would go straight over it, and along the footpath, which passes the "big elm." But it is just because it passes the elm she has now paused, and is pondering. Her errand calls for haste, and there she would meet a man sure to delay her. She intends meeting him for all that, and being delayed; but not till on her way back. Considering the darkness and obstructions on the footwalk she may go quicker by the road, though roundabout. Returning she can take the path.

This thought in her mind, with, perhaps, remembrance of the adage, "business before pleasure," decides her; and drawing closer her cloak, she sets off along the lane.