UP ON THE MOUNTAIN next morning Dai Bando saw my back and dropped his hands, and his eyes that were always half closed went to nothing in a frown.
“What is this, boy?” he said, in his high little voice.
“School,” I said.
“Have your brothers seen it?” he asked, and put his fingers to his mouth to whistle at Cyfartha.
“Ianto did,” I said, “but there is nothing to be done because of my mother.”
“Well, I will go to my death,” said Cyfartha.
“Who is he?” Dai asked me, and looking at me sideways, with his head on one side.
“Mr. Jonas,” I said. “Mr. Jonas in school, and Mr. Jonas-Sessions out.”
“Mr. Jonas-Sessions,” Dai said, and rubbing his knuckles together. “Have we got business to do over in there, Cyfartha?”
“There is the match for Thursday,” Cyfartha said.
“So if we do go over there,” Dai said, and staring hard at him, “we are only going over by there to fix the match for Thursday, eh Cyfartha?”
“No other reason I can think of, Dai, my little one,” Cyfartha said, and very sober. “Unless you are thinking of paying a call social.”
“There are worse ways of spending five minutes,” Dai said. “Plenty, indeed. Mr. Jonas-Sessions, is it? Eh, Cyfartha?”
“A good man with a stick, Dai,” said Cyfartha. “I wonder what would he do with a box of eggs?”
“Social, me, to-day,” said Dai, “in my best breeches and bowler bloody hat. Eh, Cyfartha?”
“Me, too,” said Cyfartha.
“Go you home, boy,” said Dai, and very kind, “and come in three mornings from now. Is it?”
“Thank you, Dai,” I said.
“And if you do see a couple in their best doing it big to-day,” Dai said, “it is none of your business. Eh, Cyfartha?”
“Eyes open,” Cyfartha said. “Mouth shut.”
So off I went home, and into trouble.
“Huw,” my father said, “off with your shirt.”
“It is nothing, Dada,” I said, for my mother was watching cold.
“Do you dare to answer me?” my father shouted, in black rage. “Off with your shirt.”
Off it had to come and quick, indeed.
My mother went to stand by my father to put her hands about his shoulders. I stood for a moment with the heat of the fire on my side. There was quiet, but I could feel my mother’s eyes.
“Why did you have that, my son?” my father asked me.
“I was fighting, Dada,” I said, and back in my shirt.
“Did you win?” my father asked, and patting my mother’s hand to stop the shake.
“Yes, Dada,” I said.
“So you had your marks on your back, then, this time, my son,” my father said.
“Yes, Dada,” I said.
“Good,” said my father. “Five shillings in the box for you.”
“But Gwilym,” my mother said, and ready to burst with anger and surprise. “Will you let him be beaten like that? Will you let a brute of a man treat your son like that and let him free?”
“If I will go down there to him, Beth,” my father said, “I will have the bones hot from his body.”
“Let me go, Dada,” Ivor said. “Bron have cried all night.”
“Nobody shall go, if not me,” my father said. “The boy was beaten for fighting. I told him to fight and I tell him to fight again, even for such a beating. If it is against the laws of the school, then a beating he must have. But go on fighting, my son. Is it hurting with you?”
“Not much, now, Dada,” I said.
“Good,” he said. “Five shillings in the box, Mama, and he shall go with the boys and me to see Ireland playing us, is it?”
I went to school that morning three feet from the ground with joy, and the nightingale egg making a hard lump in the corner of my cap.
There was a different spirit among the boys, so different that I could have laughed in their faces. Instead of the whispered jokes and laughing that I had had ever since going there, now they looked at me with a look almost of appeal, as though anxious to show friendship. A couple of those on the list even smiled at me and said a good morning.
There is silly are people. You must suffer, or cause others to suffer, before you will have respect of one kind or the other from them. I was having both kinds that morning, and not liking it, either. I will not stand to be looked at by anybody, especially when the looking is done with wrong thinking.
And a man is a man, suffering or not, and entitled to just as much respect as he is, as he might be after suffering, or with the sufferings of others on his conscience. So I passed them all by, and went to look for Shani Hughes.
Not a word or a look from Mr. Jonas after he had just put his eyes on me for a moment when we went in to prayers. All through the day I sat, and sometimes Shani turned to smile at me, and sometimes Ceinwen looked round.
But there was a look there that made me draw back from giving her a good smile. Her eyes were bright blue, with the white nearly all round and very white, and yet, for all their brightness and white, there appeared in them not a darkness, but an inner fogginess, as though she saw me, not as me, but as part of her thoughts.
I was ready to run from that look, indeed.
We had been back from dinner about half an hour when there was a knock in the middle of religious instruction and please would Mr. Jonas kindly step into Mr. Motshill’s room, from a little girl from Standard Three, who just put the top of her head round the door like a little mouse, and ran. Mr. Jonas gave his catechism to our monitor and went out.
As soon as he was gone Ceinwen came to sit by me. I took no notice for a little while, but then she slid an ivory ruler toward me, with calibrations on it, a lovely piece of craft and a delight to hold, with its age golden in it.
“That is for the one I broke,” she said. “I was always sorry about your box.”
“Where did you have it?” I asked her.
“From my father,” she said. “I asked him first. Have it. I have put my name on the back with a pin.”
“Thank you,” I said. “But perhaps your father will want it.”
“No, no,” she said. “I told him I wanted it for you. Will you give me a nightingale’s egg, now?”
“Who told you?” I asked her.
“Shani Hughes,” she said. “She has got it in a little box with a piece of glass, and I want one. O, Huw. Give me a nightingale’s little egg, is it? I would do anything for you, back. I kissed you, see.”
“You shall have an egg,” I said, “and I will make the little box. But not because you kissed me. Not one for one. Only because treat one, treat the other.”
I looked down at Shani and found her looking at me straight, but darkly and for some reason I was sorry for her, and I wanted to go to her to put my arm about her and shield her, though from what it would be hard to say.
Then shouting came from the hall, and got louder, Mr. Motshill’s voice, and Mr. Jonas’, and furniture being broken, somebody screaming, heavy steps running in the hall and more shouts and screams, and all the girls in school started screaming, but nobody knew why. Everybody in class ran out of their desks to the door, but then the door burst open and Mr. Jonas ran in, with Dai Bando and Mr. Motshill, three of the masters behind, and Cyfartha Lewis just leading Mr. Tyser, who stood in the doorway clapping hands with one side of his collar loose.
Mr. Jonas was torn and in pieces, collarless, with a piece of his tie hanging like a rag, his coat ripped, his trousers torn all the way down, and his face white, and watery in the eyes, and purple in the cheeks from flat-handers that Dai gave him whenever his head came up, slap, slap, one, two, almost as quick as you can count, not with the knuckles, but with the palm.
Mr. Motshill was trying to stop Dai hitting, but Dai was taking no notice, not a bit, and Mr. Motshill was dancing with anger and shouting, and hitting Dai’s broad back with his fists, but nothing could be heard in the screaming of the girls. Cyfartha put one of the masters on the floor with a hook, and the other two dropped their hands and stood watching Dai. As soon as he was sure there was no danger of the other masters joining in, Dai off with his belt and gripped Mr. Jonas about the neck and bent him over his knee, and with his foot on the step of the desk platform. The way that belt slashed and cracked, and the way Mr. Jonas shouted was a marvel, although he could barely be heard, for the screaming from the girls when Dai took him by the neck could not have been bettered beyond the bounds of purgatory.
Dai was finished and Mr. Jonas crying limp, then he winked to Cyfartha, and they gripped him, shoulders and feet, and swung him right through the open trap of the coal locker and shut the lid.
Dai took papers and tobacco from his bowler hat and rolled a cigarette, and with Mr. Motshill and the others watching them, helpless, Cyfartha lit a fusee for him, and he puffed blue clouds while the screaming went down and down like the end notes of the hooter. Dai wiped his forehead with a pull down of his sleeve, and put his bowler hat on straight, and turned to look all round the class. Although he saw me, nothing was in his eye, and I will swear nothing was in mine.
“You bully,” Mr. Motshill was shouting. “You cowardly brute. You dare come in here to this school and assault a master. You shall be dealt with by the law. If I were younger you would carry my mark with you.”
“I am paying a call,” Dai said, soft, and almost as though he was saying he was sorry. “I had thought to have him up on the mountain, and not in here. I asked him to come, see? Eh, Cyfartha?”
“Invited he was,” Cyfartha said, “and not polite to say no, either.”
“He ran from me,” Dai said, “so I had to run after him. I came a long way to find him, but I was willing to go through hell to China to have him. And I had him in by here. So what is the odds? Eh, Cyfartha?”
“Yes, yes,” Cyfartha said. “Nice and comfortable, he is, now, see? Nothing more he could want in the world. So home for a pint, is it, Dai, my little one?”
“A good pint,” said Dai, “would do me a blessing of good, indeed to God. A dusty old place you have got in here, sir, dusty indeed. Dry on the throat, and useless for a song, eh, Cyfartha?”
“A frog would have it hard to get a note,” said Cyfartha.
“Good afternoon to you, sir,” said Dai, and touching his bowler hat very civil to Mr. Motshill. “And good afternoon, everybody else, and to hell with him in by there.”
And out they went and their boots knocking on the board floor, and the door outside bump, bump, bump behind them. Not until the last swing did Mr. Motshill move, and then he sat tiredly on the edge of the desk.
“Be good enough to bring Mr. Jonas to light,” he said, almost in a sigh.
Two masters pulled open the lid, and Mr. Jonas came to light with his hair in a mop and his face streaked with coal, with the swellings of Dai’s finger marks purple on his cheeks, eyes cold with rage, and shivering all over when they helped him from the room, wordless but with little sounds that might have been laughable, but made feelings of pity. It is strange how you shall hate a man, and yet pity him from the depths.