How Green Was My Valley (29 page)

“Amen,” said we all.

Out on the mountain we were, with the cold winds of night about us, and the flames
of torches to light us, listening to Mr. Gruffydd before we went through the village
to clear dross and uselessness from the Valley.

That day a little girl had been savaged on the mountain, and when I came from school
the people were out in the street on the Hill, and down in the village the shops were
shut, and the Chapel bell was ringing. While I was having my tea, my father came in,
for the colliery had closed early for the men to be home and start the search for
the swine in the form of man.

“She is dead,” my father said, and quiet in the voice, “but we will have him if we
have to move the mountain.”

“Go you,” said my mother, in tears. “Poor, pretty little thing she was.”

I went with the men to trim the torches and carry the oil with other boys. My father
and my brothers were there in amongst the crowd of two or three hundred, and all of
them quiet and not speaking. Mr. Gruffydd had them on the side of the mountain ready
to go down into the village just after dark, after the men had just had time to bathe
and eat. He told them that the time had come when their women were no longer safe
to go their ways in peace.

“Beasts live among you,” he shouted, “working with you shoulder to shoulder, who will
kill your children and go their ways unpunished. They will make of your community
a morass of corruption. Will you laugh if I talk to you of the Evil One? Will you
smile if I mention the name of Satan? Then let me show you the body of a child, torn
by murderous claws. Perhaps I shall see your heads flung back in guffaws. This little
soul met her death not at the hands of a man, but at the talons of a beast. A beast.
And beasts of that sort are the sons of Satan. Such beasts you shall exorcise, as
He did with the Gadarene swine. Are we decided? Are we in one mind?”

“Yes,” said the crowd.

“Then, come,” Mr. Gruffydd said, “let us cleanse ourselves.”

Down from the rock and out in front of the crowd, striking up a hymn as he went, down
toward the village Mr. Gruffydd led us. The boots of the men beat time upon the ground,
and their voices flung the anthem before them, and the blaze of torches lit their
bearded faces and struck sparks from their eyes.

Into the village we went and everything quiet, doors shut, no lights, no people, and
no sound but the march of men and the voice of justice.

Around each public house, and all round the three rows of houses where the half-breed
Welsh, Irish, and English were living, the men took a stand, almost elbow to elbow,
so that none could go in or out. Then Mr. Gruffydd and twenty men went into the first
public house and warned the landlord to serve no spirits for a week, and to serve
beer only to gangers in charge of five or more men, none to any woman. Then to the
second and to the third. It was a bad night for the public houses, for nobody was
in them, and indeed the landlords were not to blame. They were good men in themselves,
but they had to make a living, too.

But they had to suffer, and they suffered with silence. They knew it would only take
a match to put them in the street with nothing, and the flames of their property to
warm them.

Up to the rows of houses where the dross of the collieries lives. These people did
the jobs that colliers would never do, and they were allowed to live and breed because
the owners would not spend money on plant when their services were to be had so much
the cheaper. For a pittance, they carried slag and muck, they acted as scavengers,
and as they worked, so they lived. Even their children were put to work at eight and
nine years of age so that more money could come into the house. They lived, most of
them, only to drink. Their houses were bestial sties, where even beasts would rebel
if put there to live, for beasts have clean ways with them and they will show their
disgust quick enough, but these people were long past such good feeling. They were
a living disgust.

Up to those three rows of hovels went Mr. Gruffydd, and knocked upon the first door,
but no answer.

The mountain went up black into the night on all sides of us, and the knocking flew
about in an echo trying to find a place of rest. The torches made a ragged ring about
the houses, and below each torch, that streamed flame like the blown hair of a running
fury, men’s faces were pale, and shadowy pink, and their eyes deep holes, until they
moved to show the flash of whites. Shadows of men leapt up the sides of the mountain,
or were flung against the walls of the houses, whichever way the torch flames blew,
and breath was grey about them, for the night was going to frost, and the slates of
the roofs were showing something of silver, and finger-tips were happy only deep in
the pocket.

Again and again Mr. Gruffydd knocked, and at last a window, only big enough to let
out a head, and the only window in all the house, opened and let out a head.

“Who is it?” in a woman’s voice, and thin with fright.

“The Vigilants,” Mr. Gruffydd said, and his voice rolled into the night and about
the mountain, and the torches moved as the men quickened all about, and their voices
breathed a deep note.

“Not us, not us,” the woman screamed, “nothing to do with us.”

“Open your door,” said Mr. Gruffydd, “no harm shall come to the innocent. Open, and
now.”

Back went the head, and in a moment the door was opened, and Mr. Gruffydd went inside
with my father and Rhys Howells, and a couple of moments later they came out pushing
three men before them.

“Get you over there,” Rhys Howells said to them, and pointed to the place where an
old shaft had been sunk and closed up again. Into the hole they went, and men moved
up to guard them.

Into house after house Mr. Gruffydd went, and now with no more trouble, for doors
were opening before he had to knock. All the men were brought out, and the women told
to keep inside with the children.

When the last was under guard, Mr. Gruffydd came to take his place upon the rock,
with all of us about him in a ring.

“Now,” he said, “let the men be brought one by one for questioning.”

With them all it was the same. First, their names, their jobs, their wages, and which
shift they were on that day. For if they were on the day shift they could not have
been on the mountain to meet the little girl. It was the night-shifters, and the work-shys
we were after. One by one they came and went, all of them quiet and in fear, and some
Irish, some Scotch, some English, and some inter-breed Welsh.

So we came to Idris Atkinson.

Tall, and thin beyond his length, white in the face, and with sick spots, long in
the hair and restless with his hands, with nails chewed to make you turn your eyes
from him.

“Day or night shift?” Mr. Gruffydd asked him.

“Day,” he said, and looking from side to side without moving his head.

“Which level?” asked Mr. Gruffydd.

“No business of yours,” he said, to the ground.

“Which level?” asked Mr. Gruffydd, in the same voice, quiet and without edge.

“Third,” he shouted, after a wait.

“Third was closed to-day,” Rhys Howells said, and folded his arms, rocking on his
heels, looking up at the mountain. Then he stood still, and his eyes went to Mr. Gruffydd.

Quiet, except for the whisper of the torches, and the tiny sounds that come from many
men who wait with breath held tight.

Swine looked about him with his mouth open, and his nostrils wide, and his eyes gone
red with fear, and his voice gone from him in the silence, with his blunt and twisted
hands restless about his clothes that were polished stiff with grease and coal-dust,
and fell about him, and showed his thinness through gapes at elbow and knee.

“Go down to his house,” said Mr. Gruffydd, “and bring the women here. Look well for
his clothes and his cap.”

“Nothing there,” whispered swine. “Nobody in the house. Not me. I never done it.”

But men were on their way down at a run.

Quiet again, and nobody looking at swine crying on his knees, and looking round toward
the house. Then a shout from down there, and men running back to us, and all talking
and taking big breaths to ease themselves.

Evan Thomas, and Sion Prosser had an armful of clothes each.

Evan put a flannel shirt, black with dirt and dried hard with blood, on the rock in
front of Mr. Gruffydd. All the other clothes, a coat, and a waistcoat, and a pair
of trews, had blood on them, and on the cap it was yet damp.

“Did you have an injury to-day?” Mr. Gruffydd asked him.

“No,” said swine, standing now, and shaking. “A pony it was.”

“No pony was blooded to-day or yesterday,” said Llewelyn John, the ostler, from the
back of the crowd.

“Days and days ago, it was,” said swine, in a woman’s voice.

“But the blood is fresh,” said Mr. Gruffydd, “and it smells. And you wore these clothes
to-day. Open your clothes to show your chest.”

“No,” said swine, and put his hands about him, and fell to his knees.

“In her finger nails were pieces of flesh,” said Mr. Gruffydd, with quiet. “So her
spirit left its mark. Open your clothes.”

“No,” screamed swine.

Rhys Howells and Tom Davies went to him and took a piece of the coat on his back each,
and pulled it in halves from him. And as he screamed they tore away the rags which
covered him under the coat.

Deep scratches covered his chest like thick ruled pencil lines, and when they pulled
away his trews, blood was on him, and all the time he screamed. Naked, he clawed at
the ground and the screams tired his throat, and he sobbed, and spittle fell from
his mouth.

“Where is the father?” asked Mr. Gruffydd, looking down at swine.

“I am here,” said Cynlais Pritchard, and stood forward with his three sons, looking
up at Mr. Gruffydd.

“Your daughter has gone from you,” said Mr. Gruffydd. “Instead to see her grow to
womanhood and have joy in your grandchildren, you walk behind her to-morrow because
a beast put his claws upon her as she walked the mountain. Your daughter was not of
an age to be forward, and small blame we can put to her, for she left a message to
you in the body of the beast itself.”

Silence, and Cynlais Pritchard trying to hold his tears with eyes shut blind, and
fists digging into his thighs.

“To hand her murderer over to the police will give him an extra day to live, which
your daughter was denied,” said Mr. Gruffydd. “He shall be fed and housed until the
day he meets the rope, but your daughter will lie beneath the dead wreaths long before
then, and the rope gives a good death, quick and clean, without blood, without pain,
without torture of the soul and body. Is justice done, then, with a rope about the
neck of a man, and his victim, a child of seven years, torn and twisted, long in her
grave?”

“No,” said the crowd.

“Shall we burn him?” asked Mr. Gruffydd. “But if we do, he will die a death of honour,
for martyrs died in the flame. What then?”

“Give him to me,” said Cynlais Pritchard.

“Is that your common decision?” Mr. Gruffydd asked the crowd.

“Yes,” they all shouted back.

“Take him,” said Mr. Gruffydd, “and as we do with him, so shall we do with the next,
if next there is. And remember, if you bury him, however deep, you pollute innocent
ground. Burden not the earth with such.”

One son took a torch, and the others helped their father to take swine from there,
and we all knew without the telling that they would have him up where they had found
the girl in her blood, and on that spot he would suffer.

So we stood, and the light got smaller as they climbed, and the screams passed, and
presently they were over a shoulder of the hill and out of sight.

“Let us pray,” said Mr. Gruffydd. “Lord God, we are weak men. If we have done wrong
to-night, so be it. I will face Thy wrath at the Bar, and I will answer that we did
right. Unto each his just reward. In Christ’s Holy Name, Amen.”

“Amen,” said the crowd, and when Mr. Gruffydd got down, they started for home in quiet,
saying nothing, watching for the light of the torch to appear above them on the mountain.

The spark appeared, and with it a deep note from the crowd, but nobody stood. It went
slowly to the right until it came to the briars beside the path that went up to the
farm. There they had found the girl.

It stopped, and went out, and the mountain was black.

The houses of the Hill hid us from it as we went up, but when we went round the back
to go in, a strong light was burning, as though they had fired the grass up there,
and in the smoothness of the flame I thought I saw the movements of men. But I thought
of Marged, too, and went in fear to bed.

A policeman with a silver spike in his helmet, and a silver chain hanging on it, came
to the Valley next day, but nobody knew what he wanted, and nobody could be found
to answer his questions, so he went off again.

All the morning, I watched Clydach Howell, in his wheelwright’s shop, making the little
coffin from the white heart of an old oak, and learnt a lot from him in the matter
of putting joins instead of nails and screws, and nails and screws where they are
not to be seen. I helped to quilt silk for the lining and tap studs in the shape of
flowers all round the edge to keep it in place. So good was the job when it was done,
I felt it a shame to put it in the ground.

But I let Clydach take it to the house.

I have never been one for a funeral.

Cynlais and his wife and sons, and their married daughters, and their husbands, and
families were all down in the house when I took Mr. Gruffydd’s books down to him.
All the people in front of the house were in their best, ready to walk in the funeral
procession up to the graveyard over the mountain. As they waited they spoke of the
night before, and many looked up at the black patch among the browns and greens of
the mountain side.