Testimonies: A Novel (22 page)

“There were many other things I heard too; she had left the farm in the middle of the night—that was when he was still at Hafod. She had been seen with him in the haybarn; he was giving her presents from London. There were many, many things that I heard.

“The feeling in the village was strong against her; that was to be expected, she having been so proud.

“Nobody knew whether they knew at Gelli. None of the men would have asked Taid or Emyr for their lives, but I believe some of the women went to see Nain. But they got nothing out of her: they had always kept themselves rather to themselves at Gelli, and they lay well out of the village, so there was not that coming and going that there would have been if it had been a house in the village, and of course not so much information.

“Some pretended to know more than they did: I heard it repeated that Emyr would not attack him for fear of scandal, and would not make him go away because he paid so well—it had been a bad year for all the farms. Some said that Nain knew but would not tell Emyr. Mrs. Evans said that Bronwen was expecting. Many of them thought that: she looked poorly.

“I wanted to know what was happening there. Armin Vaughan was my old friend, and Pritchard Ellis had solemnly asked me to write to him to tell him what happened, so that he could judge the effect of his sermon. Because of that I considered it my duty to listen to the gwas, Llew, and almost to encourage him to come and see me. He was a sharp boy, and not much escaped him. He said he had known it before Pritchard Ellis, and he had seen them many times; he thought they were still doing it.

“I wanted to know the truth, and I asked Megan Bowen, who had obliged for Mr. Pugh at Hafod before they parted on some disagreement. She was a stupid woman and she knew nothing about it. She said it was all nonsense, and if she caught anybody saying that about Bronwen she would give them a knife to eat: I believe she would have; she was a very rough old woman. Every Sunday Bronwen carried her a hot dinner, so I suppose that was why she knew nothing. It was strange, though, because she did not seem to care for Mr. Pugh: she said he was a poor, thin fellow. It was no good talking to her; she was a queer, independent woman, hardly respectable except she was a widow with a good pension.

“It went far and wide. I heard it in Llanfair and Dinas, and Dai Jones wrote to me from Liverpool to ask if it was true what he heard there. It is natural for people to be interested in one another’s affairs in the country, and anything of that nature was sure to be talked about: but this time there was much more talk than usual. It was because Bronwen was such a strange beauty for our people—I do not say that for myself, for I never thought her more than very pretty when she was younger, but other people who were better judges said it was so and no doubt they were right in their opinions—and it was because the Gelli’s had always held their heads high. Indeed, one of the saddest things about all this was the pleasure all the people in the village took in the misfortune of the Vaughans, and their hope that it would soon be worse. Even good men and women who had known them all their lives would clack their tongues and say it was very sad, but in every way they showed how excited and pleased they were. It was not that they wished them any harm. I am sure that if there had been a fire at Gelli every one of those that said bad things would have been there to help, or in illness, they would not have been wanting in charity. It was this particular thing.

“The women, most of them, had never liked Bronwen and for them (and for the men) it was worse because she was going with the English gentleman. There were a lot of bad things said about him: they said he came into our country with his airs and ways and he thought everybody else was dirt. They said he would not have left his own country if he had been good enough for them, where he came from. They said he had insulted the rector down at Pontyfelin: nobody had much to say for
him
, but at least he was a Welshman. They said that his name was not Pugh at all—he only put it on to sound Welsh: but I am sure that was not true. They said he had quarreled with Mr. Skinner, Tan yr Onnen, who was a man with a big house and servants. They said he ought to go back to his own country, before he did something else in the valley. They said there would not be a blessing on anything in Cwm Bugail while he was there in his sin.”

“Was there no one who said anything the other way?”

“Yes. There were some, Megan Bowen for one—she said there was no truth in it at all, but she was a stupid woman who would contradict anything. She said to Henry Watson, the English lorry-driver, who had passed a remark at Williams’ sale rooms, ‘I am castratting those—s if they are talking.’ She knew the word because of the lambs.

“There were some men who said that he was not so much to blame, even King David had done it, and of course the young men and bachelors were not judging him. A few women, too, who did not blame him so much because they said he was led on: but that was not the general feeling. It was strong against them both, but strongest against her.

“You had only to point out the dreadfulness of the crime to the others for them to admit at once that there was nothing to be said.

“I did not know what was happening at Gelli. I often met Emyr and Armin Vaughan, but I could not understand anything from them. It was queer, I could not talk to them the same as before; it was as if something had changed. It was almost as if I had done them some wrong and I could not properly face them. Other people were like that too. I did not think Armin Vaughan knew anything about it, or what people were saying, but I could not tell with Emyr. He was strange with me. I could not tell, or talk to him properly to find out. It might have been so many things, as well as the awkwardness between us.

“The others I never saw, Nain or Bronwen and Mr. Pugh. I did not go there. I felt I could not.

“It went on for week after week, and the excitement went on. It did not get less. The women were all on about Bronwen expecting: she hardly ever came into the village now—she never had much, but now they said she came much less, ashamed to be seen and afraid of what they might say or do—but when she did come they all ran to look, every one of them, to see if she showed.

“They all used to ask the grocer and the baker after they had been there delivering. It took them twice as long on their rounds with the questioning.

“I did not like it. I never did say that wrong was right, but there got to be a time when I hardly knew my own mind. It was the women outside my window: they went clack clack clack, never stopping. There was the servant Llew; I was afraid that it was all doing his character great harm and that I should never have listened to him. I had to check him; it came to me that I saw that he took a nasty pleasure in telling me what he saw, or what he said he saw, because I was beginning to doubt him.

“Then, when I was disgusted at the clack-clack-clack I asked myself whether I was not one with them. It was a bad thought, that. Pritchard Ellis reassured me in a letter and exhorted me to continue with my duty, but still I turned from it. I had never doubted him before, but I thought he might be mistaken now, at such a distance. There was something
nasty.

“I thought I would go to see Mr. Pugh. I was not sure what I should say to him; I hoped it might come while I was talking. I wanted to do what was good in that family: but when I was halfway there I thought of his clever talking and his way of talking and I turned back home.

“I was sorry, and ashamed for my weakness, and when I was in bed I thought what I would say. The next day I took that road again, stronger in my mind but still doubtful and hoping that it would come with talking.

“The first person I met by the cattle-gate said, ‘Bronwen Vaughan Gelli has poisoned herself.’

“The second person, hurrying on the road, said, ‘Bronwen Vaughan is poisoned.’

“I did not speak to them. At the farm there was violence and disruption. One of the carthorses was clattering lost about the yard. The little boy Gerallt stood with a white face. Llew the servant was whispering close to Gwyn Davis and inside the house someone was going Oh oh oh. I spoke sharp to Llew, told him to put the mare away and set the farm to rights. He could hardly obey me; he could hardly think of work, like a dreadful holiday.

“The doctor came out of the house. She was dead. I went home and all the way there were people hurrying; but I could not speak to them.”

Q
. So it was better when Ellis left the house?

A
. No. There was a short time when I thought we were rid of him: I turned the house out like another spring-cleaning, but it was no good. He was still there in the village and Emyr went to see him. Emyr was very queer after that. I thought I knew him through and through, but I could not understand him then. He was very good and gentle with me and he wanted us to be like lovers again. He was forcing himself to it in some way; he had never been like that before; and although he was so gentle I felt something behind it: he was keeping something back and it was against his nature.

Q
. You refused?

A
. Yes. It was no good. I could not think of it. I would have liked to be kind to him, but I could not trust him. I knew it would be the end, for him too, if he started again.

Q
. Was there any thought of Mr. Pugh in your mind when you would not have him?

A
. Oh no. I had reason enough without any more. But perhaps knowing him, having him in the house, made the thought of Emyr worse.

Q
. No words had ever passed before this between you and Mr. Pugh?

A
. No. We had never said anything; we never did.

Q
. But by that time you knew how he felt, and how you felt for him?

A
. Yes. But we had never spoken; there was no need. It had taken me longer to know his mind, but before that, long before that, I loved him.

Q
. Why was it so long, do you think? He had been breaking his heart for you a great while.

A
. I was stupid, to begin with. When you are all taken up with everyday work you do not notice things that you would not look for. I would never have looked for Mr. Pugh, whether he liked me except as the woman of the farm. If it had been, say, Dai Hendre Uchaf wanting to make court to me I dare say I would have seen it as soon as he did, or even before he knew his mind, and I would have sent him along at once. At the very first you can do it without hurting at all.

Q
. Had you been obliged to do it before?

A
. Oh yes. There was Trefor Williams—but it was not important. It was just his way with every woman who was not old. And a few others when I was a girl. It did not matter, once I understood how to send them away.

Q
. Yet with Mr. Pugh it was so different? He was a man like the others, surely?

A
. It
was
different, though. We were only common people, working people, and he was a gentleman coming from England. For us it makes a great difference. They can be very nice to us, friends even, if they are what my mother called the real gentry, but there is always that big difference. Unless you are like us you do not know what a difference it makes, shaving every day and putting on a collar—just that, without all the rest, being educated, knowing foreign countries and being rich.

Q
. Did you count Mr. Pugh rich? He lived in a cottage by himself and he had no car.

A
. Yes. He was what we call rich. He did not have to work.

Q
. So did you think of him as a superior being?

A
. Better than us? No. It was not better, exactly, though he knew so much more and he had such fine manners. Not better or worse. It was that he was different. Just
different.
I do not know how to explain it better than that.

Q
. I should like to go on just a little longer with this point if I may. I understand that he had many different ways, another way of talking and behaving, but he was still a man like every other man, was he not?

A
. No. He was not a man like any other man. He was the dearest man in the world for me. The difference in him was right inside, nothing to do with him belonging to other people. Without his gentry or his money or anything, if you put him by another man it was gold against brass. But to begin with it was just the ordinary difference that made me so slow and stupid. Unless he is wicked (which you can see at once) you do not expect a man like him to admire you.

Q
. Would it not be flattering?

A
. Yes, it would be flattering for a—for a bad woman.

Q
. So there you were, with love for him. You cannot fix a time when it began?

A
. No. I have tried. Perhaps it was some time before Pritchard Ellis came. It was somewhere about that time when I felt it in my heart, a great comfort, like something that gave me strength. When I knew it, and said it to myself, then it began to grow fast. The sound of him moving in his room was lovely. The smallest thing. And then I quickly knew that he was the same for me. It was good, so good that there is no way of telling how good it was. It was music in my heart. I cannot say what it was like, but I know that I would have gone through anything,
anything
, Emyr and all those years for it: it was worth that and a hundred times over.