قراءة كتاب David's Little Lad
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broken, letting forth some of my rebellious thoughts, “I’m so dull here, I do so want to live a grand life.”
“Tell me, dear, tell me all about it?” said David tenderly. To judge from the tone of his voice he seemed to be taking himself to task in some strange way. The love in his voice disarmed my anger, and I spoke more gently.
“You see, David, ’tis just this, you and mother have got Tynycymmer, you have the house, and the farm, and all the land, and, of course, you have plenty to do on the land, riding about and seeing to the estate, and keeping the tenants’ houses in order, and ’tis very nice work, for ’tis all your own property, and of course you love it; and mother, she has the house to manage, and the schools to visit, but I, David, I have only dull, stupid lessons. I have nothing interesting to do, and oh! sometimes I am so dull and so miserable, I feel just as if I was buried alive, and I do so want to be unburied. I have no companions. I have no one to speak to, and I do long to go away from here, and to see the world.”
“You would like to leave Tynycymmer!” said David.
“Yes, indeed, indeed I should. I should dearly love to go out into the world as Owen has done; I think Owen has such a grand life.”
Here I paused, and finding that David did not reply, I ventured to look into his face. The expression of his silent face was peculiar; it showed, though not a muscle moved, though not a feature stirred, the presence of some very painful thought. I could not believe that my words had given birth to this thought, but I did consider it possible that they might have called it into fuller being; quickly repentant I began to apologise, or to try to apologise, the sting out of my words.
“You know, David, that you and mother are not like me, you both have plenty to interest you here. Mother has the schools, and, oh! a thousand other things, and you have the place and the farm.”
“And I have my little lad.”
“Of course—I forgot baby.”
“Yes, Gwladys,” said David, rousing himself and shaking off his depression, “I have my son, and he won’t leave me, thank God. I am sorry you find your home dull, my dear. I have always wanted you to love it, there is no place like it on earth to me.”
He took my hand very gently, and removed it from his arm, then walked with great strides into the house. His face and manner filled me with an undefined sense of gloom and remorse.
I followed him like a guilty thing. I would not even go into the drawing-room to bid mother good-night, but went at once up to my own room. When I got there, I locked the door; this conversation had not tended to raise my spirits. As I sat on my bed, I felt very uncomfortable.
What an old, old room it was, and all of oak, floor, walls, ceiling, all highly-polished, and dark with the wear of age. Other Gwladys Morgans had carved their names on the shutters, and had laid down to rest on the great four-post bedstead. Other daughters of the house had stood in the moonlight and watched the silent shining of the waves. Had they too, in their ignorance and folly, longed for the bustle and unrest of the great wide world, had they, too, felt themselves buried alive at Tynycymmer? With David’s face in my memory, I did not like these thoughts. I would banish them. I opened a door which divided my room from the nursery, and went noisily in. What an awkward girl I was! I could do nothing like any one else; every door I opened, shut again with a bang, every board my foot pressed, creaked with a sharp note of vengeance. Had nurse Gwen been in the nursery, what a scolding I should have merited, but nurse Gwen was absent, and in the moonlit room I advanced and bent over a little child’s cot. In the cot lay a boy of between one and two, a rosy, handsome boy, with sturdy limbs, and great dark-fringed eyes; he was sleeping peacefully, and smiling in his sleep; one little fat hand grasped a curly, woolly toy dog, the other was flung outside the bedclothes; his little pink toes were also bare. With undefined pain still in my heart, and David’s face vividly before me, I bent down and kissed the child. I kissed him passionately, forgetting his peculiar sensitiveness to touch. He started from his light slumbers with a shrill baby cry, his dark eyes opened wide. I took him out of his crib, and paced up and down with him. For a wonder I managed to soothe him, skilfully addressing him in my softest tones, rubbing my forehead against his soft cheek, and patting his back. The moon had left this side of the house, and the room was in complete shadow, but I did not think of lighting a candle, for to the child in my arms the darkness was too dense for any earthly candle to remove; he was David’s little lad, and he was blind.
Chapter Three.
Some Day, you will See that he is Noble.
I have said that David’s great characteristic was strength, but by this I do not at all mean to imply that he was clever. No one ever yet had called David clever. When at school he had won only second or third class prizes, and at Oxford very few honours had come in his way.
He had a low opinion of his own abilities, and considered himself a rather stupid, lumbering kind of fellow, not put into the world to make a commotion, but simply, as far as in him lay, to do his duty.
David was never known to lecture any one; he never, in the whole course of his life, gave a piece of gratuitous advice; he could and did advise when his advice was directly demanded, but he was diffident of his own opinion, and did not consider it worth a great deal. To the sinners he was always intensely pitiful, and so gentle and sorrowful over the erring, that many people must have supposed he knew all about their weaknesses, and must once have been the blackest of black sheep himself.
No, David possessed none of the characteristics of genius; he was neither clever nor ambitious. To be in all men’s mouths, and spoken highly of by the world, would not have suited him at all; he cared, we some of us thought, almost too little for man’s opinion, and I have even on one occasion heard Owen call him poor-spirited.
But all the same, I am not wrong in saying that David’s great, and grand, and distinguishing characteristic was strength. He possessed strength of body, soul, and spirit, to a remarkable degree. Long ago, in the past ages, there were men of our house, men who ate roast beef, and quaffed beer and cider, and knew nothing of the weak effeminacy of tea and coffee; these were the men who would laugh at a nerve ache, who possessed iron frames, and were of goodly stature. Of course we degenerated since then, our lives became less simple, and more luxurious, and our men and women in their paler cheeks and slighter frames, and bodies capable of feeling bodily suffering, bore witness to the change.
But David was a Morgan of the old race—tall, upright, broad, with massive features, neither handsome nor graceful, but strong as a lion. He had never in his life known an ache, or a day’s serious illness. When Owen and I suffered so much with the measles, David did not even stay in bed; so also with whooping-cough, so also with all other childish maladies. He caught them of course, but they passed over him lightly as a summer breeze, never once ruffling his brow, or taking the colour from his cheek. Yes, David was strong in body, and he was also strong in mind; without possessing talent, he had what was better, sense; he knew which path was the wisest to tread in, which course of action