Testimonies

by Patrick O'Brian

  In every human encounter there is a mutual probing, a weighing of the potentialities of the other. I was soon aware that this Ellis was very penetrating, very fine. He was an ignorant fellow as far as book-learning went, but there was a lively intelligence there, of a certain kind. I did not wish to be penetrated, divined by him: I kept at a distance, talking vaguely and sometimes foolishly: but when we came to our evening discussions, I found that he had exactly calculated my strength and my weakness as an adversary.

  It was depressing to see the strength of his influence on the better people in the valley. Taid loved and respected him. The other deacon, old Lewis, Cletwr (very rich), came often to visit although the rivalry between him and Taid made Gelli an uneasy house for him, and it made me gasp to see this successful, hard old farmer hanging on the words of the Reverend Mr. Ellis. He was revered: there is no other word for it. The schoolmaster, too; he would get up when Ellis came in, though he must have been twice his age, and I know that he had a high sense of what was due to him.

  I think that the base of Ellis’ power must have been his pulpit oratory, but I cannot speak of it as I never heard him preach. I did not understand him well when he delivered those long monologues that were half sermons, because of the particular accent and special delivery that Welsh preachers use, and the unaccustomed turn of phrase, but they seemed to have a great effect on Nain, Taid, Emyr and any of the visitors who came in to hear him. From the style of these and from what I knew of the man I supposed that his full-blown preaching would be of the most enthusiastic hell-and-damnation kind, and I was not surprised when Nain assured me, with tears in her eyes, that at one open-air function he had converted eighteen quarrymen, who had been wicked before.

  Bronwen did not like him. I was sure of that before I ever saw them together. I could not pretend to “understand” her thoroughly, as people say; there was much too profound a character there for any glib, facile comprehension, and in spite of the sympathy that stretched like a bridge between us, there were many of her reactions that were dark to me, and much that I could not seize. But as far as that went I was completely certain: there was no question in my mind at all. And I was right. She was very polite to him and I think she respected him for his calling; a mind as pure as hers could hardly in so many words grasp the existence of a spirit wholly depraved: she suspected it then, I believe, but deep down; and she certainly turned from him with an instinctive aversion. Why was this aversion not more general? These people were not fools; they were not to be imposed upon in other ways. All that I could bring forward, different religious traditions, love of oratory, success (he was very successful), the power of example; these did not seem to me to be enough. But obviously they were: I did not understand it.

  It was necessary to keep on civil terms; one must not start quarreling with the friends of the house, and in this case more than any other I would have done anything rather than disturb the peace of mind of my hosts: it was Taid in particular that I thought of; that good old man’s tranquillity—it would hardly have been an exaggeration to call it holy. He never suspected my loathing for Ellis: he was charmed that I should now have someone to talk to. “We are ignorant men,” he said, “like sheeps.”

  It was fortunate that I should have had a good deal of practice in living sociably with people I disliked, because Ellis regarded my reserve as a challenge, and he would not let me alone. An invalid is very helpless, and although by this time I was walking about quite easily, up to Hafod and back for books with no great effort, I could rarely escape him; the wintry spring kept me indoors nearly all the time.

  He soon found that I was not to be charmed, and then he tried to dominate me: at least I think it was that. He was always driven, he had to be proving his defenses by attack: I know that he felt that his reputation was at stake.

  Whenever there was an audience, and there often was—Taid, Emyr and myself sitting round the big kitchen fire, with a visitor or two, and the boy Llew on the settle in the background—he would start some discussion or other, a point of doctrine, the superiority of the Welsh over the English (he was a prudent Nationalist, the depth of his dye depending on his company) or some political measure. He was a clever fellow: he knew exactly how to trim along with the opinion of his people—implied flattery of the audience and all the rest of it—and he always chose to talk on subjects with which he was well acquainted, like theology, or, if he strayed out of his narrow limits, to confuse it with irrelevances and cloak his ignorance with a cloud of words. He knew by this time that I knew what he was at, but he spoke for victory in the minds of his audience.

  It is possible that he had a commonplace material motive as well: as I understand it appointments among the nonconformists depend on the favorable opinion of the elders; and Ellis was ambitious.

  In these discussions there was no place for the liberal exchange of ideas; they were contests, nothing more or less. I was an unwilling participant most of the time: in the first place I did not care for being in the same room as Ellis, and I did not wish to be a party to his designs. There was no escape, however, without giving offense where I could not bear to give it. They loved these evenings, the others: Taid would sit beaming from one speaker to another, jerking his head in a very knowing fashion, and occasionally he would say Very good. Emyr would whisper a translation to him from time to time, otherwise even the general drift would have escaped him. Between translations Emyr sat with his mouth open and his face shining, enraptured: had we been two Solomons we could not have given him more pleasure.

  In talk of this kind, with such an adversary, a man is shackled who has some regard for truth and civility. When we talked about Wales, for example, I could not bring forward instances of the nation’s bad side, not sitting there before a Welsh fire, a guest in a Welsh house. But Ellis was at liberty to vilify England as much as he liked, and free to make what accommodations he chose with fact; so he usually had the best of it. Although I knew that victory on these terms did not wholly satisfy him (he was too intelligent for that) and although I knew that often I was possessed of arms that could have crushed him if I had chosen to use them, yet still my vanity was sufficiently engaged for this to be irksome. It was petty of me, I know, to have been irritated by such a fellow, but I was: there were little things that stuck in my gullet, the snigger of Llew when Ellis scored a point (he was all ears, that boy, and he listened so intently that he dribbled), the unashamed partiality of the audience, and Ellis’ insufferable habit of touching me to emphasize his argument. Beyond that I must admit that he was a much more facile talker than I was; he had a glib flow of words and images that I could not but admire, however little I respected it.

  What really vexed me was the presence of Bronwen. The women took no part in the talk; they hovered from time to time at the edge of the lamp-lit circle, but they never sat down with us. Before I understood this barbarous convention I had embarrassed them both by offering my chair. Still, they were there, and I was sure that Bronwen followed the turn and run of the argument. A man must be of a bigger nature than I was not to wish to shine a little, or at least not to be overcome, when his—what, sweetheart, beloved? mistress?—is there.

  I did have my little triumphs, though. Once or twice Ellis’ caution slipped and he talked of things he did not understand. Greek poets, once. He knew some New Testament Greek, but nothing of Attic, and I indulged in the pleasure of making him look a fool; he disguised it very ably, but I knew he was writhing, and I kept it up for some time. And once I was able to knock his degree of Bachelor of Divinity on the head with my doctorates, but that was ignoble and gave me no pleasure on reflection. He was eternally jealous of my different education and standing, and he could not refrain from taking notice of it. His usual way was to try to make me appear to take a stand on privilege—a mock humility: “Of course, Mr. Pugh, I have not had your advantages,” or “But I dare say they know better than us at Oxford, isn’t it?” It is a difficult attack to parry, but the spite was a little too evident
; he overplayed his hand, and sometimes he made the others uneasy.

  Only once did I really beat him down. It was one of those tedious, interminable harangues about the wrong-doings of England. I was quite identified with England, despite my Welsh ancestry and name; and seeing the poor old country so abused I accepted the nearly untenable post of defender: I say untenable because I defy any man to defend the actions of Henry VIII against his grandfather’s people, or that series of repressive enactments that ended in the decay (now happily arrested) of the Welsh language and culture. The conversation followed its well-beaten lines (the past is close at hand in Wales, nearly as close as it is in Ireland) and diverged to treat of the English kings.

  I have no strong political opinions: if most of the Liberals I knew had not been vegetarians or holier-than-thou water-drinkers, milksops, I dare say I should have been a mild Whig. But as we came down through the generations from the Georges through the old Queen to our day, and as the manner of speech showed a kind of disrespect that I could not tolerate, I felt myself growing more and more Tory every minute. I was becoming seriously displeased. Ellis did not see it until he had gone too far and he was shocked and surprised when I cut right across one of his treasonable periods and put him to silence.

  My words may not have been very impressive; I stuttered before bringing them out and said, “Mr. Ellis, this conversation is in the poorest of taste. It is most unpleasant to me and I must ask you to stop it at once. We will speak of something else, if you please.” No, I could have improved on the words if I had not been so angry; but the manner was effective enough.

  He stopped dead and looked frightened for a moment. There was an uneasy silence in the room, broken only by Llew’s snigger. Ellis darted a look of hatred at him, and I began to talk about the charms of life in the country after many years of life in the town.

  Bronwen

  Q. Mr. Pugh came into Cwm Bugail after Gerallt was born, I think?

  A. Yes, long after. He came to Hafod the year we lost all the hay.

  Q. What did you think of him at first?

  A. I did not think anything much about him at first. He seemed a good, quiet sort of gentleman, but I thought he was just one of the English visitors who would go away very soon. He came the autumn before, for a holiday, and then he took Hafod for good the next year. Emyr saw more of him, and liked him very much.

  Q. Did Emyr like strangers usually?

  A. No. Particularly not English visitors. There were Welsh people from the university who used to stay in the village—Nationalists. He liked them. He liked talking to them.

  Q. Did it surprise you that he liked Mr. Pugh?

  A. I do not remember now. I don’t think so: anyone would have liked Mr. Pugh.

  Q. Mr. Lloyd did not.

  A. No. He was jealous because Mr. Pugh was a professor at Oxford or something: but Mr. Pugh always spoke well of him.

  Q. Emyr did not mind Mr. Lloyd’s opinion?

  A. Oh, Mr. Lloyd never said anything; he was much too good for that, and I do not think Emyr ever knew—he did not understand people very well. If they would have used hard words to one another he would have understood, but not otherwise.

  Q. So Emyr liked him?

  A. Yes. He was always asking him things and Emyr would tell him. Emyr liked that. He used to tell Taid what Mr. Pugh said, and they laughed, because Mr. Pugh did not know the difference between a hespin and a wether. It was not that they made game of him, but they could not understand how a man could be so ignorant. It pleased Emyr to explain things to a college professor, but besides that Emyr was a kind, friendly man if he was spoken to properly, and he liked to be a good neighbor.

  Q. At first you did not see much of Mr. Pugh?

  A. No, only when he came for the milk, and a few times when he came in for tea or supper when he had been out with Emyr on the mountain, to see the sheep or for the gathering or something like that.

  Q. You had no very clear impression of him?

  A. He was always very nice. He treated Nain and me like ladies and took his hat off when he came in and said Thank you for a very good tea, or Thank you for a good supper when he left, and he brought a present for Gerallt, a teddy-bear, from London. But although he came down more as Emyr and he grew more friendly, he was just the English gentleman at Hafod, and I put half a pint of milk aside for him every morning. I did like him, though I did not think of him much beyond the milk. When he looked poorly I put cream in the milk. It was not until he fell ill and came down to stay with us that I came to know him at all well.

  Q. How did that happen?

  A. He had been looking ill for some time, Nain said—she saw him more often than I did when he came down in the morning. Then for some time he did not come down at all and we began to get frightened for him. Emyr went up, but he did not seem to be in, and he came down again. Then I went up, carrying the milk, and I thought I heard him answer when I knocked, but it was blowing hard and I was not sure. The door was on the latch and I listened inside, and there he was, calling from upstairs. I went in. It was such a mess you would not believe. He was in bed, with a muffler on. He was so pale I thought he was dying. He had not shaved for a long time and that made him look even worse. I thought he was dying, and I was so sorry and put about. But he answered sensibly and said it was very kind of me to come up, but I should not have bothered; he said he was quite well, only a little cold. I asked him if he could take a little something, like some warm milk, and he said he was sure it would do him good, but I was not to trouble. I went down to the cegin-fach behind: the mess was terrible. Dishes everywhere, piled in heaps, and on the floor. All the saucepans were dirty. There was no kindling. It went to my heart to see it. He had a patent stove, but I was afraid of it and lit a little fire of paper, just enough to heat the milk. When I brought it to him he started to drink, but he was sick before he could finish it. He was so ashamed of the mess, and all the time I was clearing it up he was apologizing and his voice got weaker and weaker. At the end he was hardly right—he was talking so that I could not understand him. I tucked him fast into his bed, because he was moving his arms about, and ran down. Emyr went for the doctor and Nain and I went up again. He seemed to be asleep, so we left him and began to set the place to rights.

  It was dreadful. He had no more idea of looking after himself than a baby. He had more plates and dishes than we had at the farm, for all of us and for the shearing, and he had used them all. There was mold on some of them; and mice everywhere. He had never swept once, I believe, since Megan Bowen had stopped going to Hafod. There was nothing in the larder except dozens of ends of bread and some cold fried eggs. The doctor said it was the gastric, very bad, and it turned out that he had eaten nothing but eggs for months and months and they were very bad for him: he did not know how to cook anything else.

  The doctor wanted him to go where nurses could look after him, but the cottage hospital was full, and he did not like to send him the long journey to Llanfihangel. In the end we looked after him for two days and then he was brought down to the farm and we put him in the little parlor.

  It was then that I got to know him well: Nain and Taid could not understand him much when he spoke English, nor when he tried to speak Welsh—the words were right sometimes, but it never sounded like Welsh—they could not understand it, and Emyr was out most of the day, so I had to talk to him most.

  Q. When did you know he loved you?

  A. I don’t know. Not for a long time.

  Q. Had there ever been any talk at Gelli about Mr. Pugh admiring you? Even in joke?

  A. No indeed.

  Q. On your side, when did you come to think lovingly of him?

  A. That was a long time too.

  Q. It did not happen suddenly?

  A. Oh no. It was slow, slow; I do not even know when I first thought of it. I liked him so much as I came to know him: more and more every day I liked him.

  Q. What made you like him so?

  A. Oh, everything.
r />   Q. But what special things?

  A. Well, it is hard to pick on things by themselves. His kindness. He was so good to Taid. There was that time when Rhys, Llwyn, stole from him and he would not have him locked up although the sergeant was very angry about it. He said he would deal with it himself: Rhys said he gave him a pound. Then when Pritchard Ellis came and they used to talk in the evening: they were all against him, and he answered so well. Pritchard Ellis tried to bait him but he never said anything, never flew out, only answered gently, and made Pritchard Ellis look like the mean cunning low thing he was.

  Q. Can you think back to the time when you first began to wish that he might distinguish you?

  A. I must have answered stupidly. I never did want him to trouble his head about me for a moment. I liked him very much—everything he did or said, practically, and the way he did or said it—and I was sorry for him, because he was sad and alone, with nobody. But as for wanting him to look twice at me in that way, no it never could have come into my head. I never put myself to have any man pay court to me in my life: and in those days, a woman as I was, I would not begin to think in that way.

  Q. I did not mean to offend you: believe me, I did not intend any offense. Let me put it better. You did love him in the end, did you not.

  A. Yes. I loved him dearly, and before the end.

  Q. What I should like to know, then, is when you began to know the strength of your feeling for him. Was it in response to his affection, or did it arise before you knew his state of mind?

  A. It came so gently, little by little, I cannot tell.

  Q. When it did come, and you knew it, did you not think it very wrong to love another man besides your husband?

  A. No. It seemed to me quite right.