My Neighbors | Page 6

with ease.
"Break him in like a frisky colt, little man bach,"[1] said Anna to the farmer. "Know you he is the son of Satan. Have I not told how the Bad Man came to me in my sound sleep and was naughty with me?"
[Footnote 1: Dear little man. "Bach" is the Welsh masculine for "dear"; "fach" the Welsh feminine for "dear."]
But the farmer had compassion on Abel and dealt with him kindly, and when Abel married he let him live in Tybach--the mud-walled, straw-thatched, two-roomed house which is midway on the hill that goes down from Synod Inn into Morfa--and he let him farm six acres of land.
The young man and his bride so labored that the people thereabout were confounded; they stirred earlier and lay down later than any honest folk; and they took more eggs and tubs of butter to market than even Deinol, and their pigs fattened wondrously quick.
Twelve years did they live thus wise. For the woman these were years of toil and child-bearing; after she had borne seven daughters, her sap husked and dried up.
Now the spell of Abel's mourning was one of ill-fortune for Deinol, the master of which was grown careless: hay rotted before it was gathered and corn before it was reaped; potatoes were smitten by a blight, a disease fell upon two cart-horses, and a heifer was drowned in the sea. Then the farmer felt embittered, and by day and night he drank himself drunk in the inns of Morfa.
Because he wanted Deinol, Abel brightened himself up: he wore whipcord leggings over his short legs, and a preacher's coat over his long trunk, a white and red patterned celluloid collar about his neck, and a bowler hat on the back of his head; and his side-whiskers were trimmed in the shape of a spade. He had joy of many widows and spinsters, to each of whom he said: "There's a grief-livener you are," and all of whom he gave over on hearing of the widow of Drefach. Her he married, and with the money he got with her, and the money he borrowed, he bought Deinol. Soon he was freed from the hands of his lender. He had eight horses and twelve cows, and he had oxen and heifers, and pigs and hens, and he had twenty-five sheep grazing on his moorland. As his birth and poverty had caused him to be scorned, so now his gains caused him to be respected. The preacher of Capel Dissenters in Morfa saluted him on the tramping road and in shop, and brought him down from the gallery to the Big Seat. Even if Abel had land, money, and honor, his vessel of contentment was not filled until his wife went into her deathbed and gave him a son.
"Indeed me," he cried, "Benshamin his name shall be. The Large Maker gives and a One He is for taking away."
He composed a prayer of thankfulness and of sorrow; and this prayer he recited to the congregation which gathered at the graveside of the woman from Drefach.
Benshamin grew up in the way of Capel Dissenters. He slept with his father and ate apart from his sisters, for his mien was lofty. At the age of seven he knew every question and answer in the book "Mother's Gift," with sayings from which he scourged sinners; and at the age of eight he delivered from memory the Book of Job at the Seiet; at that age also he was put among the elders in the Sabbath School.
He advanced, waxing great in religion. On the nights of the Saying and Searching of the Word he was with the cunningest men, disputing with the preacher, stressing his arguments with his fingers, and proving his learning with phrases from the sermons of the saintly Shones Talysarn.
If one asked him: "What are you going, Ben Abel Deinol?" he always answered: "The errander of the White Gospel fach."
His father communed with the preacher, who said: "Pity quite sinful if the boy is not in the pulpit."
"Like that do I think as well too," replied Abel. "Eloquent he is. Grand he is spouting prayers at his bed. Weep do I."
Neighbors neglected their fields and barnyards to hear the lad's shoutings to God. Once Ben opened his eyes and rebuked those who were outside his room.
"Shamed you are, not for certain," he said to them. "Come in, boys Capel. Right you hear the Gospel fach. Youngish am I but old is my courtship of King Jesus who died on the tree for scamps of parsons."
He shut his eyes and sang of blood, wood, white shirts, and thorns; of the throng that would arise from the burial-ground, in which there were more graves than molehills in the shire. He cried against the heathenism of the Church,