My People: Stories of the Peasantry of West Wales/Be This her Memorial
BE THIS HER MEMORIAL
IX
BE THIS HER MEMORIAL
Mice and rats, as it is said, frequent neither churches nor poor men's homes. The story I have to tell you about Nanni—the Nanni who was hustled on her way to prayer-meeting by the Bad Man, who saw the phantom mourners bearing away Twm Tybach’s coffin, who saw the Spirit Hounds and heard their meanings two days before Isaac Penparc took wing—the story I have to tell you contradicts that theory.
Nanni was religious; and she was old. No one knew how old she was, for she said that she remembered the birth of each person that gathered in Capel Sion; she was so old that her age had ceased to concern.
She lived in the mud-walled, straw-thatched cottage on the steep road which goes up from the Garden of Eden, and ends at the tramping way that takes you into Cardigan town; if you happen to be travelling that way you may still see the roofless walls which were silent witnesses to Nanni's great sacrifice—a sacrifice surely counted unto her for righteousness, though in her search for God she fell down and worshipped at the feet of a god.
Nanni's income was three shillings and ninepence a week. That sum was allowed her by Abel Shones, the officer for Poor Relief, who each pay-day never forgot to remind the crooked, wrinkled, toothless old woman how much she owed to him and God.
“If it was not for me, little Nanni,” Abel was in the habit of telling her, “you would be in the House of the Poor long ago.”
At that remark Nanni would shiver and tremble.
“Dear heart,” she would say in the third person, for Abel was a mighty man and the holder of a proud office, “I pray for him night and day.”
Nanni spoke the truth, for she did remember Abel in her prayers. But the workhouse held for her none of the terrors it holds for her poverty-stricken sisters. Life was life anywhere, in cottage or in poorhouse, though with this difference: her liberty in the poorhouse would be so curtailed that no more would she be able to listen to the spirit-laden eloquence of the Respected Josiah Bryn-Bevan. She helped to bring Josiah into the world; she swaddled him in her own flannel petticoat; she watched him going to and coming from school; she knitted for him four pairs of strong stockings to mark his going out into the world as a farm servant; and when the boy, having obeyed the command of the Big Man, was called to minister to the congregation of Capel Sion, even Josiah’s mother was not more vain than Old Nanni. Hence Nanni struggled on less than three shillings and ninepence a week, for did she not give a tenth of her income to the treasury of the Capel? Unconsciously she came to regard Josiah as greater than God: God was abstract; Josiah was real.
As Josiah played a part in Nanni’s life, so did a Seller of Bibles play a minor part in the last few days of her travail. The man came to Nanni’s cottage the evening of the day of the rumour that the Respected Josiah Bryn-Bevan had received a call from a wealthy sister church in Aberystwyth. Broken with grief, Nanni, the first time for many years, bent her stiffened limbs and addressed herself to the living God.
“Dear little Big Man,” she prayed, “let not your son bach religious depart.”
Then she recalled how good God had been to her, how He had permitted her to listen to His son’s voice; and another fear struck her heart.
“Dear little Big Man,” she muttered between her blackened gums, “do you now let me live to hear the boy’s farewell words.”
At that moment the Seller of Bibles raised the latch of the door.
“The Big Man be with this household,” he said, placing his pack on Nanni’s bed.
“Sit you down,” said Nanni, “and rest yourself, for you must be weary.”
“Man,” replied the Seller of Bibles, “is never weary of well-doing.”
Nanny dusted for him a chair.
“No, no; indeed now,” he said; “I cannot tarry long, woman. Do you not know that I am the Big Man’s messenger? Am I not honoured to take His word into the highways and byways, and has He not sent me here?”
He unstrapped his pack, and showed Nanni a gaudy volume with a clasp of brass, and containing many coloured prints; the pictures he explained at hazard: here was a tall-hatted John baptising, here a Roman-featured Christ praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, here a frock-coated Moses and the Tablets.
“A Book,” said he, “which ought to be on the table of every Christian home.”
“Truth you speak, little man,” remarked Nanni. “What shall I say to you you are asking for it?”
“It has a price far above rubies,” answered the Seller of Bibles. He turned over the leaves and read: “‘The labourer is worthy of his hire.’ Thus is it written. I will let you have one copy—one copy only—at cost price.”
“How good you are, dear me!” exclaimed Nanni.
“This I can do,” said the Seller of Bibles, “because my Master is the Big Man.”
“Speak you now what the cost price is.”
“A little sovereign, that is all.”
“Dear, dear; the Word of the little Big Man for a sovereign!”
“Keep you the Book on your parlour table for a week. Maybe others who are thirsty will see it.”
Then the Seller of Bibles sang a prayer; and he departed.
Before the week was over the Respected Josiah Bryn-Bevan announced from his pulpit that in the call he had discerned the voice of God bidding him go forth into the vineyard.
Nanni went home and prayed to the merciful God:
“Dear little Big Man, spare me to listen to the farewell sermon of your saint.”
Nanni informed the Seller of Bibles that she would buy the Book, and she asked him to take it away with him and have written inside it an inscription to the effect that it was a gift from the least worthy of his flock to the Respected Josiah Bryn-Bevan, D.D., and she requested him to bring it back to her on the eve of the minister's farewell sermon.
She then hammered hobnails into the soles of her boots, so as to render them more durable for tramping to such capels as Bryn-Bevan happened to be preaching in. Her absences from home became a byword, occurring as they did in the hay-making season. Her labour was wanted in the fields. It was the property of the community, the community which paid her three shillings and ninepence a week.
One night Sadrach Danyrefail called at her cottage to commandeer her services for the next day. His crop had been on the ground for a fortnight, and now that there was a prospect of fair weather he was anxious to gather it in. Sadrach was going to say hard things to Nanni, but the appearance of the gleaming-eyed creature that drew back the bolts of the door frightened him and tied his tongue. He was glad that the old woman did not invite him inside, for from within there issued an abominable smell such as might have come from the boiler of the witch who one time lived on the moor. In the morning he saw Nanni trudging towards a distant capel where the Respected Josiah Bryn-Bevan was delivering a sermon in the evening. She looked less bent and not so shrivelled up as she did the night before. Clearly, sleep had given her fresh vitality.
Two Sabbaths before the farewell sermon was to be preached Nanni came to Capel Sion with an ugly sore at the side of her mouth; repulsive matter oozed slowly from it, forming into a head, and then coursing thickly down her chin on to the shoulder of her black cape, where it glistened among the beads. On occasions her lips tightened, and she swished a hand angrily across her face.
“Old Nanni,“ folk remarked while discussing her over their dinner-tables, “is getting as dirty as an old sow.”
During the week two more sores appeared; the next Sabbath Nanni had a strip of calico drawn over her face.
Early on the eve of the farewell Sabbath the Seller of Bibles arrived with the Book, and Nanni gave him a sovereign in small money. She packed it up reverently, and betook herself to Sadrach Danyrefail to ask him to make the presentation.
At the end of his sermon the Respected Josiah Bryn-Bevan made reference to the giver of the Bible, and grieved that she was not in the Capel. He dwelt on her sacrifice. Here was a Book to be treasured, and he could think of no one who would treasure it better than Sadrach Danyrefail, to whom he would hand it in recognition of his work in the School of the Sabbath.
In the morning the Respected Josiah Bryn-Bevan, making a tour of his congregation, bethought himself of Nanni. The thought came to him on leaving Danyrefail, the distance betwixt which and Nanni's cottage is two fields. He opened the door and called out:
“Nanni.”
None answered. He entered the room. Nanni was on the floor.
“Nanni, Nanni!” he said. “Why for you do not reply to me? Am I not your shepherd?”
There was no movement from Nanni.
Mishtir Bryn-Bevan went on his knees and peered at her. Her hands were clasped tightly together, as though guarding some great treasure. The minister raised himself and prised them apart with the ferrule of his walking-stick. A roasted rat revealed itself. Mishtir Bryn-Bevan stood for several moments spellbound and silent; and in the stillness the rats crept boldly out of their hiding places and resumed their attack on Nanni's face. The minister, startled and horrified, fled from the house of sacrifice.