My People: Stories of the Peasantry of West Wales/The Woman who Sowed Iniquity
THE WOMAN WHO SOWED INIQUITY
VII
THE WOMAN WHO SOWED INIQUITY
This is the chronicle of Betti Lancoch, who was the daughter of Essec, the Essec of whom is written on his gravestone that he was possessed of two farms named Lancoch and Llanwen, that he had a name among the religious men of the Big Seat in Capel Sion. On Essec’s death Betti’s inheritance was Lancoch, which is the smaller of the farms; and the inheritance of her brother Joshua was Llanwen.
Until her thirtieth year Betti was a princess in Sion. Her wealth was a prize for which many intrigued and prayed; and although much gravel was thrown at her window at nights she did not give herself to anyone.
Her brother Joshua looked very keenly after her interests. He was anxious that she should marry a godly, humble man, and from the tales he told her, godly, humble men were scarce in the land. Even the character of Rhys Shop was shown in a bad light when he got to know how the white-faced, big-paunched shopkeeper one night tried to climb up the wall to the room wherein Betti slept. Joshua was married himself, and did not find much pleasure, he said, in it, and he wished to keep his sister as free and happy and pure as the Big Man had ordained she should remain. For he managed the selling of most of the produce of Lancoch and paid himself, one way or another, for his trouble.
Betti answered only too well to her brother's skilful guiding. She did not open the window of her room to any man in Capel Sion or in the place around. Now on an August day she went to Eisteddfod Castellybryn and there met Gwylim, the son of Silah and Tim, farmers in the Vale of Towy. … Gwylim came and courted Betti in full daylight, wherefore the men of Sion grew angry, and they called on Joshua and said to him: “Speak you to her, little Josh, for is she not your sister, man?” Joshua took counsel of God. God answered him by a dream. “Well-well, Josh bach,” He said, “very terrible is this about the wench Betti. Windy is the female. Command you her to remain unwed. Moreover, not right for her to take a husband away from Capel Sion. Ach y fi! Giving her farm and pennies and silver and yellow gold to a male who worships trappings and ceremonials in the old church! Be you wrathful with her in My name.” Joshua spoke these words, and more, to his sister, but Betti refused to turn from her way, for which reason Joshua and the men of Capel Sion were disquieted, and they asked God to deal according to His wisdom with this woman who wilfully strayed from the path of the religious.
Betti jerked her freckled face and snapped her fingers, and boasted in the security of her riches: “Goodness me, must then I be instructed in my doings by a pack of old hens? Sure now, I am not beholden to any in Capel Sion.”
In the foolishness of her vanity she curled her yellow hair like a Jezebel, and she fashioned the front of her hair into a fringe which she wore over her forehead. Her brother Joshua came to her from Llanwen.
Betti, heedless of the cow lowing to be milked, was tying up her hair before a looking-glass.
“Woman,” cried Joshua, beholding what his sister was doing, “have you no shame? Will you bring discredit on me then?”
“Josh bach, there's good you are to call, man. Do you take this bucket of wash to the old pigs, and ask Madlen Tybach to come over and milk the cow on your way home.”
“My sister Betti, for what you do not know that the wages of sin is death?” said Joshua.
“Don’t you get savage, Josh. Am I not making myself look pretty for to see Gwylim’s father and mother tomorrow?”
“Pretty! This too on the eve of the Sabbath! Is not a pretty woman a snare to the godly? Look you at Potiphar’s wife now.”
“Josh, indeed to goodness, what a talkist you are!”
“Dear me, what will Priscila say when I tell her? But then Priscila is content to stand where the little Big King has placed her—an angel ministering to me and my children.”
“What do I count what Priscila thinks! Clap your lips, Josh bach.”
“Don’t you say wicked sayings now, Betti fach,” Joshua advised her. “Speech you not that. Be you reasonable, my girl.”
“So that is why you’ve come here?”
Joshua leaned his body against the dresser, and drew his clog from his right foot and removed the dirt that had gathered on the sole between the iron rims; and he closed his mouth so that the projecting birth-tooth in the middle of it clawed his lower lip.
“The Big Man brought my feet here, Betti fach,” he remarked at last. “Listen you to me now. How would you say if I mouthed this to you: ‘Betti the daughter of Essec, this bit of land is very vexatious to you. You don’t get the best from it. Let me, your religious brother Joshua, trim it for you, and come you and live with us in Llanwen.’”
“Josh, indeed you are leaving Gwylim out!”
“Gwylim! You are not intent on wedding Gwylim?”
“Iss, man bach, I am. Think you I curl my hair for Rhys Shop? Think you I bought this nice white petticoat for him? Dear, there’s dense.”
“Mercy me, what a bad wench you are!’ cried Joshua. “Have you not heard what a dissipated boy Gwylim is? Heard you not of his doings and his cheatings over cattle? Turn you away from your purpose, and act as I bid you.”
“I shall wed him in front of all you say, Josh,” said Betti. “Boy bach swellish is Gwylim.”
“O Betti, is it a light thing to you that you take your possessions to a man who never goes to capel?”
“Little man senseless, you are eloquent! Do you think I could live for ten minutes with that old hare of your wife Priscila?”
Rhys Shop proclaimed in the Seiet that the Terrible Man’s anger was like the pierce of a new pitchfork against Betti Lancoch. Joshua fell on his knees in his pew, wept, and prayed. Thus the Lord comforts His children: when Joshua arose, lo, his eyes were dry, and he turned his face upon the Big Seat, and addressed the men of the high places of Capel Sion. He said:
“Little people, I pray you now not to think too harshly of me because my sister brings this abomination upon the nice Capel. Look you mercifully upon my affliction. Priscila fach is badly cut about it. She is not here to-night. You know how it is with Priscila—how the Big Father is blessing her with another child. The Lord, little people, will administer the rod of correction on this slut who so shamelessly sows the seeds of iniquity; she will reap vanity. Stand you by me and Capel Sion: if I am wrong, sure indeed the Big Man will send a message to Sadrach Danyrefail here.”
Worshippers on their way to Capel Sion the preceding Sunday had shuddered at the sight of Betti Lancoch flaunting herself in fine garments. Rhys Shop spoke to her:
“Whisper you to me now where you are going.”
“To the abode of Gwylim’s people,” replied Betti.
“And you say so now. There’s going to be a wedding, then?”
“Iss, iss, Rhys Shop,” Betti answered, and in her ostentatious pride she lifted her frock and displayed the skirt of her white petticoat.
Rhys bent himself and examined the material from which it had been made.
“Jasto!” he cried. "Tell you me now if you paid a shilling except a half-penny a yard for this?”
Betti laughed.
“Didn’t you now, Betti fach?” Rhys persisted. “Beautiful and useful is the cloth in the Shop that will do for your wedding gown. It is only half a crown a yard too. But there, don't you think any more about it. … Little white Jesus,forgive me for saying like this on the Sabbath. Dear me, forgetful male I was! Be with your Ruler in Sion. Amen.”
“Sabbath or no Sabbath, Rhys Shop, I will not buy my wedding gown from you. To Carmarthen will I journey and get it from the grand shop of Llewellyn Shones in the market.”
Rhys then walked with Bertha Daviss, to whom he spoke these words:
“Little Bertha, Abishag has gone by.”
So Gwylim and Betti were married, and all in and around Lancoch having been sold and the house and the land having been rented, they went to live in the town of Carmarthen; and the house of their abode has ten stone steps in the front of it, and it is named Avon Towy because that river is the distance of a field beyond it. A year after her marriage Betti came to Manteg with her child, and she magnified brazenly the fortune of her husband. But she did not say anything of the occasions that he had come home drunk, or of the times when he had struck her with the ring end of his razor strop; nor did she show to any one the sore that was on her left breast.
The man Gwylim was foolish in his drink. He backed a bill for twenty sovereigns, and when one came to redeem it he had nothing with which to pay the price. He went to his father's house and said how this and that evil had befallen him.
“Give you the boy bach the money,” said Silah to her husband Tim. "Give you him the money. This is not his fault, Little Tim. Is he not wedded to a slothful woman?”
Old Silah loved her son, and she killed for him a chicken and laid it before him. Gwylim was crafty and charged himself falsely, saying: “An old rascal am I to bring this upon you;” therefore Old Silah murmured in his hearing this lullaby:
“Pity such a concubine snared you, little Gwylim, my son bach.”
Old Silah’s lullaby lodged itself in Gwylim’s brain; and drank he never so deep nor got he never so muddled, he remembered it always. It was as if the words were the first words he had been taught to utter.
Betti ceased to visit Manteg; she rarely went out of her house. Always she was either with child or she bore some mark of her husband's savagery: often both stopped her from going abroad. In common with the women of her race constant child-bearing made her slovenly and sallow. With the birth of her fifth boy arrived her first act of humiliation: she wrote to her brother Joshua for the loan of thirty sovereigns. Joshua answered that he would lend her fifteen sovereigns provided she signed a bill of sale on Lancoch.
Betti hid away the money in a decanter.
Now it happened that on an afternoon Gwylim was very drunken, and he came to the decanter in which the money was hidden.
“Fiery Pool!” he shouted. “Where did you get this from? Oh, you’ve been whoring. You concubine! You slut!”
His rage was so great that he scattered the gold on the floor. Then he gathered it up and went out, and to all whom he met he groaned that a harlot had lured him and that a harlot was the mother of his children. “Did not the old mam say,” he cried, “‘Pity the bitch of a concubine snared you, boy bach’?”
In the morning of the day Betti opened the door of her house, and she saw that Gwylim was fallen at the foot of the stone steps, his head resting on the first step. She carried him into the house and took off his clothes and put him into bed. Before the end of the day Betti thanked God that paralysis had gripped him. Two months later a hearse took away his body to the consecrated ground where Silah and Tim will some time join him. He will rest between them.
Betti, a widow woman with five children, returned to Manteg; and in Manteg none said to her “How be things with you, Betti fach?” for is it not known that the woman who sows iniquity shall reap the fruits thereof?
Out of the wreckage she had saved enough to provide Lancoch with a poor cow, a couple of pigs, and a few hens. She tilled the soil as well as a woman without implements can till it. But stray cattle wandered into her fields because of the broken hedges, and late in the springtime a herd of cows spent a night in her garden. These cows belonged to her brother Joshua.
Betti then said to Joshua: “I might indeed as well not have touched my garden, Josh; your old cows have trampled on all my little beds.”
Joshua replied: “Well-well, Betti fach, for why you do not keep your hedges in trim, then? Dear, dear, you are like the foolish virgins.”
“Keep you your cows under eye,” Betti answered.
“What a wicked tongue you have, Betti!” answered Joshua. “To think that we both come of the same religious father!”
Betti made no reply.
“And Betti,” Joshua resumed, “the five over ten sovereigns are more than due now. Give them to me.”
“Five over ten sovereigns?”
“Iss, iss. Dear me, it’s a long time since I lent them to you. Much did I sacrifice for this. But I couldn’t think of you going in want, Betti fach. No, no, are you not my own flesh and blood? Of course, you won't anger the Big Man by trying to cheat your brother, will you?”
“I haven’t any yellow gold,” Betti answered. “I don’t know where to get it, unless I sell Lancoch. Indeed, I’ve been unlucky since I've had the place.”
“Betti, for shame! Don't you blaspheme. It's the Big Man’s way. And it will be sinful to sell Lancoch. Did not our father and grandfather live here?“
“What else can I do? You must have the money?”
“According to the law, Betti fach, Lancoch is mine if pay you cannot.”
“Lancoch was given to me.”
“For surely, Betti fach. For surely. But did you not sign the little agreement?”
“Agreement or no, Lancoch is mine.”
Joshua took possession of the land around Lancoch. He put up new gates, and repaired the hedges, and divers times he drove Betti’s cow out of the fields into the roadway. It was a dry summer, and water was scarce in the ditches that are alongside the roads; Betti’s cow went thirsty for three days, and then she laid herself down on the moor whither she had wandered, and perished.
Joshua turned in at Lancoch.
“Little Betti,” he said, “grave is the news I have for you. Priscila has promised Lancoch to Hugh the Stonemason.”
“You want me to go off?”
“Glad I’ll be if you go off, Betti fach.”
“Where?”
“Pity now you didn't take the offer to come and live in Llanwen. I can’t go back on Priscila’s word to Hugh. And he'll be handy about the place. There’s the money too. Josh the Small is costing me a deal now. Educating a boy to be a little preacher does take a lot of money, Betti. But I am only lending to the Big Man.”
Betti broke in: “Josh, I’ve been a foolish woman. I rejected your counsel, and I mocked the Man of Terror. But I am humbled now, Josh bach. All the stiffness has gone out of me. And the Big Man is angry with me.”
“Repent you, Betti fach, and He will forgive you.”
“Little Josh, I have passed through the Pool since I wedded Gwylim. Oh, Josh,” Betti cried, “deal gently with your sister nice. Turn you not me out of my home. What is the rent to you? Listen you to my plea, there's a boy bach.”
“I would now, indeed, but you see Priscila has given her word”
The infant nestling against Betti’s breast touched the sore made there by the ring end of Gwylim’s razor strop, and the place hurt her. She gave a cry; and with that cry there arose in her heart something of the old spirit of the woman who flaunted herself in fine vain garments on a Sabbath morning, and who laughed in the faces of the men of the Big Seat.
“Joshua,” she cried, “you’ve stolen Lancoch from me. Dear, dear, what an old Satan you are, man! Bad you are, Joshua! Look you, so long as there’s a roof over Lancoch, I will stop in the house.”
“You talk like an awful woman,” said Joshua. “Do you not know how you are tempting the Big Man? Be calm, you wicked spider.”
Joshua knelt by his bedside that night and asked the Almighty to bring into subjection the spirit of this most stubborn of His creatures.
Betti locked the door of her house and covered the windows with boards. At the weakest point, which was in the doorway, she stood armed with a crowbar.
In the morning Joshua spoke to Hugh the Stonemason.
“I have spent the night in prayer,” he said. “The Big Man has not forsaken the righteous, so whatever happens will be His doing, not ours, Hugh bach. The Lord’s will be done. Go you down to Lancoch now, and take an old ladder with you and climb to the roof, and remove the tiles one by one. Be careful lest any untoward happening befall my sister Betti, for has not the white little Jesus bidden us love our enemies? Do you see, Hugh bach, that not one slate falls on the head of our sister Betti. But if one does, well-well, then, has not the Great Male promised to be on the side of His religious children?”