"Indeed, indeed I will, Miss Powell--you laugh at that--well--may I say
Valmai, then?"
"Yes; why not? Everyone is calling me Valmai, even Shoni our servant."
"I may venture, then; and will you call me Cardo?"
"Yes, indeed; Cardo Wynne. Cardo Wynne, everybody is calling you that,
too--even the little children in the village; I have heard them say,
'Here is Cardo Wynne coming!' See, here is the path to Dinas, I must
say good-bye."
"Can't we have another walk along the beach? Remember, I, too, have no
one to talk to!"
"Oh, anwl, no! I must hurry home and get the tea for the preachers."
"And then back to the meeting on the hillside?"
"No; the meeting is in the chapel to-night."
"But when it is over you will come back along the shore?"
"Indeed, I don't know. Good-bye," she said, as she began her way up
the rugged homeward path.
When Cardo reached home, he found his father sitting at the tea-table.
The old parlour looked gloomy and dark, the bright afternoon sun,
shining through the creepers which obscured the window, threw a green
light over the table and the rigid, pale face of the Vicar.
"You are late Cardo; where have you been?"
"In the long meadow, sir, where I could hear some of the preaching
going on below, and afterwards on the beach; it is a glorious
afternoon. Oh! father, I wish you would come out and breathe the fresh
air; it cannot be good for you to be always in your study poring over
those musty old books."
"My books are not musty, and I like to spend my time according to my
own ideas of what is fit and proper, and I should not think it either
to be craning my neck over a hedge to listen to a parcel of Methodist
preachers--"
"Well, I only heard one, Price Merthyr I think they call him. He was--"
"Cardo!" said his father severely, "when I want any information on the
subject I will ask for it; I want you to set Dye and Ebben on to the
draining of that field to-morrow--"
"Parc y waun?"
"Yes; Parc y waun."
"Right, father," said Cardo good-naturedly. He was devotedly attached
to his father, and credited him with a depth of affection and
tenderness lying hidden behind his stern manner--a sentiment which must
have been revealed to him by intuition, for he had never seen any
outward sign of it. "It's no use," he muttered, as his father rose and
left the room; "it's no use trying to broach the subject to him, poor
fellow! I must be more careful, and keep my thoughts to myself."
Later on in the evening, Valmai sat in the hot, crowded chapel, her
elbows pressed tightly in to her sides by the two fat women between
whom she sat, their broad-brimmed hats much impeding her view of the
preacher, who was pounding the red velvet cushion in the old pulpit,
between two dim mould candles which shed a faint light over his face.
Valmai listened with folded hands as he spoke of the narrow way so
difficult to tread, so wearisome to follow--of the few who walked in it
and the people, listening with upturned faces and bated breath,
answered to his appeal with sighs and groans and "amens." He then
passed on to a still more vivid description of the broad road, so
smooth, so easy, so charming to every sense, so thronged with people
all gaily dancing onwards to destruction, the sudden end of the road,
where it launched its thronging crowds over a precipice into the
foaming, seething sea of everlasting woe and misery.