“No buttermilk, thank you, Mrs. Griffiths,” said Nest; “but I will come in if I may. No, pray let me sit in your kitchen! I suppose Mr. Griffiths is out on the farm?”
“Well, no, miss. He’s gone to Haverfordwest this morning. Was you wishing to see him?”
Nest, disappointed, acknowledged that she was. “But since he is from home, I can talk to you instead, Mrs. Griffiths. ’Tis . . . ’tis about that man I saw working in your hayfield yesterday evening—the man who is so lame.”
“Yes, miss?”
“I was sorry to hear Mr. Griffiths say that he felt he would have to discharge him on account of his lameness. Did the man tell how he . . . I mean, do you know what made him lame?”
“Well, Miss Nest,” said Mrs. Griffiths dubiously, “he did tell us it was a dog-bite, and Griffiths he saw the place—a nasty place whatever, he said—but Thompson ’ouldn’t tell us properly how he came by it.”
“I can tell you that,” said Nest, who had flushed up to the roots of her hair. “It was my dog, Bran, who flew at him, I am sorry to say, and that is why I wanted to see your husband about the man.”
“It was your dog, Miss Nest!” exclaimed Mrs. Griffiths. “Dear, dear! Was Thompson rude to you—did he frighten you, anwyl?”
“No, no, not at all,” said Nest stoutly. “No. I met him . . . in a lane, and he asked me quite civilly if I could put him in the way of some work. But Bran took a dislike to him and, just as he was going off, flew at him and bit him. And the man behaved so well over it that I was wondering whether I could not persuade Mr. Griffiths to keep him on, seeing that his lameness is really my fault?”
“Well, Miss Nesta bach,” replied the farmer’s wife, looking appreciatively at the pretty, appealing face within the shady bonnet, “sure I am that Griffiths would do anything in reason to oblige you, yes, indeed, but besides that the young man was really a danger to himself and everybody else while the hay was cutting—I should think he never did so much as handle a scythe before—’tis too late at all now, for Griffiths did give him his wages and discharge him last night.”
Nest’s face fell. “Oh, I am sorry for that, Mrs. Griffiths! Not of course that I blame your husband. Do you think that the young man will be able to find work elsewhere? Do you know where he has gone?”
“To Llanunwas, I think, miss, on the way to Solva. And if he could not get work there whatever, he thought maybe he could find some in Solva harbour; he did say he was used to boats, and a lame man can row better than he can fork hay. And do not be thinking, Miss Nesta, that we did turn him off last night without shelter or supper, although he is a stranger and an Englishman and we do know nothing about him—no, indeed to goodness, Griffiths ’ould never do that! Thompson had his supper and a bed and some breakfast too this morning before he went off.”
“Oh, you must not think that I am blaming Mr. Griffiths!” protested the visitor. “Of course he could not keep a man who was too lame to work . . . and, yes, I suppose Thompson might find something to do at Solva,” she added reflectively. “I wonder indeed that having been a sailor he did not go to Solva in the first instance.”
“Oh, he had been a sailor, had he, miss?” inquired Mrs. Griffiths with interest. Nest bit her lip to think that part of the secret which she was keeping even from Papa should have escaped her. However, it was not a very vital part—not, at any rate, in the hands of Mrs. Griffiths now that Thompson had left Tan-y-bach.
“Yes, or so he said,” she answered negligently. “But I really know nothing about him; only, seeing that it was my dog who bit him . . .”
“Yes, yes, indeed, Miss Nest! And I am sorry that Griffiths should have been obliged to dismiss the man. . . . Must you be going now, Miss Nesta? I hope his Reverence do keep his health, and Miss Jane, and the lovely babe, as I do hear it is?”
“I suppose,” said Nest just as she was turning away, “that the man will have gone to Llanunwas by the road, because he might have got a lift that way?”
“No, no, he did go by the cliffs, because he thought he might ask for work at the mill down yonder in Caerbwdy; but I am sure he ’ould not get it, and he will be nearly to Llanunwas by this time.”
But will he? thought Nest when the door was shut. Mrs. Griffiths seems to reckon without his lameness, and as she probably has not stirred off the farm for years, save in her husband’s gig, has forgotten how steep is the path just here down to Caerbwdy and up the other side, and how much steeper and longer is that down to Porth-y-Rhaw. Shall I . . . shall I?
But if she went after him, what could she do? Nothing, absolutely nothing, except to say how sorry she was, and give him what money she had with her.
Besides, what an extraordinary, and, had he been of her own station, an unbefitting thing to do—pursue a young man who must very little desire to see her, along three miles or so of cliff! What would Jane, what would Papa say?
Nest stood hesitating there in the sunshine, while the dogs fawned upon her. Then she deliberately turned her back on the direction of St. David’s, and crossed the remainder of the field towards the descent into the first little valley running down to the sea which had to be traversed. As she went down the winding path between the bracken every foxglove among it nodded at her, but whether in approval or warning it was impossible to say. A bramble caught her thin yellow frock, flounced and flowered, which took a great deal of careful disentangling; it was evident that the blackberry bush at least did not favour the pursuit. And Nest herself thought, What shall I feel like when I come upon him, if I do; and what shall I say? . . . I shall pretend, of course, that I was just taking a walk along the cliffs, and be very much surprised to see him, and ask him what he is doing there . . .
So she planned as she went down into the combe where the small stream tinkled along almost hidden in wild mint, and was so shy that when it reached the shore it burrowed under the pebbles, and met the sea only as half a score of dispersed trickles. Down here stood the little water-mill; should she inquire whether a man from the farm above had asked for work there, or had even been seen passing? But a glance showed that the wheel was idle; the mill for some reason or other was not working to-day. So she continued along the stream until she could most conveniently cross it on the bank of pebbles at its mouth. Mounting again the other side, she was on a long stretch of turfy grass, and could see, away to the right, the sea breaking white round the bases of the humpy, close-pressed islets at the end of Ramsey Island; fifteen miles away, the shape of Grassholm dim in the haze; and in front and on her left hand the whole sickle-sweep of St. Bride’s Bay. Last time she had been here, in June, the grassy bank which accompanied her had been one long nodding line of pink thrift; but now it was clothed in some places with the gold of lady’s bedstraw, in others with the heaven-blue of the smaller scabious; and the ground at its foot was carpeted with the purple of the wild thyme. No wonder that the air was scented!
Nest walked on; the fields receded further from the edge. Still there was no sign of Mark Thompson; yet she had hardly come far enough for that. Soon she began to approach a lesser dip, Ogof-y-Ffôs, where the ancient stone dyke, of purpose unknown, which started miles away on the other coast, came to an end. Here there was no shore, for the stream, a very small affair indeed, did not visibly meet the tide, but fell, or rather trickled, when it reached the edge of the green trough, a good thirty or forty feet into the sea below. And it was here, near this outgoing, with his back to her, that a man was half sitting, half lying on the sloping turf, staring, apparently, at the Cradle, that strange jumble of rocks projecting into the sea about a mile away, between him and the invisible entrance to Solva harbour. He wore a very shabby hat; beside him lay a staff and a bundle tied up in a handkerchief. Nest recognised the clothes; the dirty white waistcoat and the faded blue trousers. It was undoubtedly Mark Thompson.
She stopped. He had not seen her, and owing to his position and the fact that the track which crossed the depression did not follow the verge but cut across the middle of the dip, he might not recognise